Pills, prescriptions and piercings...

Can you get prescription overload? This was the question foremost in my mind as I left the local "ambulatorio" (health centre) this morning. I'd gone back to the doctor - for the fourth time in recent months - because the pain on the top of my foot seems to be getting worse rather than better, and it's getting increasingly difficult to walk and drive without pain. Last time, the doctor said it was probably tendonitis - due to the fact that I'd been walking unevenly because of the damaged ligaments in my ankle. I wasn't totally convinced of that diagnosis, as it had been two months since the ankle injury and, although it still hurt, I hadn't been limping for some weeks.

Anyway, the doctor I saw today did a much more thorough examination of the foot, and said she's concerned there's something structurally wrong (ie. with the bones, rather than the muscles) - possibly due to the same arthritis that has affected other parts of my body. But then she started to write one prescription after another; it was a little overwhelming. I have not one, but five different pills to take over the coming weeks: some are for the pain, some are anti-inflammatories, and one is something to protect my stomach from all the other pills! I've also to go back to the clinic every day over the next six days to get an injection right into the foot, and then on the sixth day I've to have more x-rays...

So the desk in my bedroom is looking rather like a pharmacy at the moment; I never imagined you could take so many different pills at the same time. I'll be so full of pills that, if I jump up and down, I'll probably make a rattling sound! However, I'm really hoping that it will make a difference to the pain that has been such a nuisance over the past three months - firstly from the ankle injury and then from this mysterious acute pain on the top and side of the foot. This has not been a good winter for aches and pains!

Talking of winter, my parents tell me that they haven't been out of the house for more than ten days because of the snow in their street. They keep emailing me photos of the front garden and the neighbours' cars, with the layer of snow getting just a little deeper from day to day. I hope it will have cleared up a bit by the time I head to Scotland for Christmas.

Meanwhile, here in Alhaurin, we seem to be having a short reprieve from the torrential rain of the past week ('though I'm not sure I believe today's forecast of a top temperature of 24 degrees! It still feels colder than that.) But the rain will be back again after the weekend, so we'll be making sure we do all our laundry over the next couple of days.

Milder weather or not, whenever I go upstairs to my room, I keep finding a strange three-headed, twelve-legged creature on my bed. Tamba, Teddi and Tobi have decided that my duvet is a nice place to take their siesta during the colder winter weather, and I regularly find the three of them intertwined and spread across the bed.... unless we have a fire in the fireplace, which is when they head downstairs and find themselves a cosy spot in the living room.