Benny's Myeloma Diary

After you cross the finish line and want nothing more than to collapse on the ground, someone will be after you to hang a medal around your neck. You might be given a goodie bag, hopefully with some edible treats and a drink. If you are really good you might find yourself called to the prize-giving a little later, but for the likes of me the best I can hope for is a spot prize of some shampoo. Monday involved the dentist in London for, believe it or not, a four and a half hour session preparing for my implants on the right-hand side. I keep biting my cheek on…

Mile 55 – All easy downhill to the line. When the finish line of a marathon has come into sight, I have kept my eye on it, focusing on nothing else other than reaching it. This is not the time to stop for a breather, whatever distractions there might be. At the Edinburgh Marathon I was aiming to beat four hours which seemed plausible, given that most of the course was downhill. By halfway I had enjoyed the following wind and found myself way ahead of schedule but the second half involved coming back into a strong headwind and proved much harder. When the big clock on the finish line…

Mile 54 – Smooth downhill stretch but very boggy at the end. A marathon may be further than you normally run. The training and race are likely to push you to break new targets. It isn’t there as a comfortable test, even if you have run them many times before. Each one is different, and you can expect to face new obstacles each time. It starts with a decision to commit to the challenge and change your normal routine, to fit in the training runs where your week didn’t allow the time before, and to be as ready as you can be on the race day. Who knows, after the…

Mile 53 – Slow going but getting easier. What is the point of toenails for distance runners? If they are not cut short enough, they just bash against the ends of your trainers, turn black, then fall off. I remember a young lady at the club who gave up running for a couple of months before her wedding simply so that she could have a full set of nails on the day. I reached a landmark in my recovery from the broken leg this week when I was able to bend my knee far enough to trim my toenails. It’s not something you can really ask someone else to do…

Mile 52 – Familiar profile: mostly downhill with a steep bit near the end. There may be toilets by the side of the marathon route but you have to decide whether to queue, with the risk of cooling down, or to hold on until the finish line. This week I took a trip to the local GP for the nurse to remove the staples where the surgeons accessed my broken bone. After some discussion about the staple removal tool, which the hospital apparently should have given me, she found one in the surgery. I imagined the normal office staple remover but this one bent the staples in the middle so…

Mile 51 – Level but quite exhausting.This is usually a problem for the day after a marathon, when the lactic acid buildup makes it tricky to descend stairs. This week has seen me very tired and mostly lying down, reading and napping. When I was discharged from Royal Sussex County Hospital a week and a half ago after breaking my leg, my last blood test showed my haemoglobin was way down at 87 g/L (the normal range is 135 – 180 g/L). That causes anaemia and a lack of oxygen to the body. It was even lower than when I left UCLH last October after the stem cell transplant (115…

Mile 50 – Hard going and very tiring up this unexpected hill. Challenging yet achievable. That’s what a marathon is about for most people who enter. You need a certain level of fitness to consider taking one on, then the training will build your confidence that you can achieve it. After completing a few you might feel confident enough to compete in the next, and to set yourself the goal of a target time. First of all, I know you will want to see the x-rays. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that the number of views of my blog posts is higher when I have something nasty like a stem…

Mile 49 – An easy mile until it all went wrong at the end. There is a whole industry to deal with problems with your gait while running. Ideally your feet should be parallel, the toes should not be pointing out, and specialists will sell you shoes, insoles and orthotics to help. This week’s blog had been prepared during the week, including some trivia, but on Sunday it all changed. You can guess that my foot shouldn’t be sticking out at that angle. On Sunday morning I finished my physio squats and bridges then set out for an idyllic Couch to 5K run, saying hello to a surprising number of…

Mile 48 – with a steep hill at the end. Anything can go wrong during your race but in a marathon there is time to recover. A good example is the 2023 London Marathon Elite Women’s event, when Sifan Hassan had to pull up after 15 miles when she injured her leg. After stopping to stretch, she caught up with the leaders, then made a mess of picking up a drinks bottle from the water table, losing more time. Regardless, she won the race with a sprint finish. As she said, “I’m going to finish the distance or the distance is going to finish me.” Having fully recovered from last…

Mile 47 – Hilly at the start but now levelling out nicely. The training might be going well for your marathon, but then you feel that tickle at the back of the throat and you know a cold is on the way. You face a dilemma: should you push on and run regardless, especially if you are at or close to the marathon itself, or follow the official guidance to just rest and recover? This week my new immune system had its first cold. I had the works: runny nose, coughing all night, even a gunky eye. It has taken a full week, including a few daytime naps, but I…