Skip to main content

Going for gold

I am ill. I have been overcome. Yeah, kidney failure, whatever...I'm not talking about that. I have Olympic fever and I fear it might be terminal.

I cried when we won the bid seven years ago and I have been looking forward to London 2012 ever since. An evening spent at the O2 - sorry, North Greenwich Arena - last Saturday has enabled me to say I Was There, watching men do un-natural things on gymnastic equipment, and this week I have been mostly watching rowing, swimming and triathalon-ing on my sofa instead of re-writing my book. I have been inspired by the story of Helen Glover, the gold-medal winning rower who only stepped into a boat 4 years ago. By my calculations, if I were to start training now, I would be on course for topping the podium in Rio 2016.

I just need to decide which discipline to take up. My height - or rather, lack of it - rules me out of rowing (plus don't fancy the early mornings) and swimming, but I don't want broad shoulders either. Shooting and archery are dashed by my poor eye sight and weightlifting...I think we can safely put that in the maybe pile. So that leaves equestrian (the last time I rode a horse I was eight, and I fell off), heptahalon (too much like hard work) and diving. Diving, according to the body match app on the BBC Olympic website, is the event to which I am best suited but the only way you will get me off that 10m board is to push me and I'm pretty sure they don't award points for falling with style. So after careful consideration, I have decided my best bet is handball. Not that many people play handball so I figure I have a good chance of making the Olympic team, and it seems to be a bit like netball - I don't know, I've only watched 5 minutes of one match, and that was men. Will my parents be proud if I win a gold medal in handball? Middle distance running sounds better. Hell, JUDO sounds better...but I need to be realistic, and handball is my best shot.

If Oscar Pistorius can bring it in the Olympics on bionic legs I see no reason why me and my no kidneys can't also make the A standard. Besides, I am a week into the summer holidays and I need a project. Just watching the athletics makes me want to get up and run around, so Heidi and I have decided to go to a gymnastics class and I have started running again, with Brendan Foster commentating in my head. I have some experience in endurance sports: kidney failure is definitely a marathon. Recently I have dearly wanted to pull up by the barriers, so I need to "dig deep and run a gutsy race". I'll find my local handball team, keep running and keep my eyes on the prize, be it a kidney or Olympic glory.
My Super Olympic Salad

My Patriotic Pavlova

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Postscript

You wouldn't believe where I am. You could guess, if you've seen the gratuitous images of my self-satisfied gurning face in front of an infinity pool on Facebook...otherwise you might find it hard to imagine the paradise in which I currently find myself. I am in Dubai. Bar Abby Clancey and the cast of TOWIE, is is not everyone's idea of paradise - it actually wasn't mine. It is exciting, exotic and fucking hot, but the skyscrapers and traffic, the desert and cultural  deficiency (not to mention the chavs that clutter up the Ritz Carlton these days, I mean honestly...) suggest you'd be hard-pushed to call it paradise. It is vaulted to utopian heights simply because, four-months after the transplant, I am here. My nearest and dearest suffered for seven years as I dreamily aired my wanderlust. Yet the reward of a post-transplant holiday seemed too extravagant a prize for which to yearn - wasn't a life free from dialysis enough? Wasn't having a drink when t...
2 comments
Read more

The nights are closing in

The final step of my home dialysis journey (bleugh, journey...sounds like I'm on The X Factor) begins on the 22nd July when Nurse Carla will arrive with a sleeping bag and, presumably, some strong coffee, and sit on my sofa all night whilst I perform my first nocturnal session. It is the dialysis equivalent of hiring a wet nurse. During a regular daytime session, nothing should go wrong unless I have lined the machine carelessly with one eye on Only Connect and consequently forgotten to connect/un-clamp/tighten something pivotal. Dermot should behave, stay quiet and not do any of his ghastly alarm-yelping. At night, however, the chances of rolling over onto the tubes and occluding the blood flow, or the needles falling out and slowly bleeding to death, are much higher, what with all the concurrent sleeping I'll be doing; when this happens Dermot senses DANGER and screams at me. Undoubtedly, my first session with Carla will be seamless; I know from experience that it is only ...
1 comment
Read more

The phone rings Part III: The Final Chapter

Two weeks ago today, I was in surgery receiving my new kidney. The hospital kicked me out in less than a week and over the last seven days I have divided my time between the transplant clinic and my sofa, with the occasional shuffle up to Sainsbury's to ensure the muscles in my legs don't atrophy. I've had the pleasure of a steady stream of visitors, all of whom have bought me yet more wonderful and totally unnecessary gifts – I have been royally spoilt and I am stupidly grateful to all of you. The kidney itself appears to be going great guns. I was initially attending clinic on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and was committed to doing so, but the hospital are so pleased with me they are happy to start seeing me just twice a week. The pivotal result they test for is my level of creatinine, a substance that occurs naturally in the body as a result of muscle break down. The kidney filters out creatinine through the urine, therefore if there is lots present in the blood it is...
1 comment
Read more