Symphony in B flat

Last night's nerve pain is persisting, so I've decided to go ahead with the MRI this week even though the GP wants me to wait a while and see how (and if) things settle. I can push through pain, but given that this is what let to my herniated lumbar disc 14 days ago, methinks probably best to go have a proper look in case the pain is actually flagging something.

An MRI machine is like an oversized hi-tech doughnut of whiz-bangery with a benign-looking plastic outer covering. It uses a magnetic field and radio waves to take pictures inside the body. People who suffer from claustrophobia are well advised to take a chill pill before immersing themselves in its bowels; I'm seeing it as an opportunity for a nice afternoon nap. The attendant radiologist advises me that the entire procedure with take about 15mins.

She also warns me that the oversized doughnut emits sounds akin to a machine gun firing, and obligingly hands me a set of headphones. There's an option to listen to "music" via the headphones, but the radiologist apologetically explains that they have a limited range of stations they're able to receive. And since I don't fancy subjecting myself to 15mins of either advertising or depressingly disastrous world news, I opt for the relative silence afforded by the headphones, such as it is.

The radiologist also hands me a panic button before vacating the room, since this is my only means of communicating with the outside world once the machine starts up. I settle in for my nap, and the bed I'm lying on whirrs its way into the doughnut hole. Unfortunately I'm obliged to hit the panic button as I realise too late that I've suffered a brain fail when stripping down to my underpants and donning the backward-facing gown I've been given: I forgot to take my brassiere off, and as the magnetic rays start to fire, its metal clips dance merrily against my back kinda like angry ants doing an on-the-spot war dance.

The attendant looks irritated when she comes back in and reverses my prostrate form from the guts of the doughnut. I hand her the offending brassiere and settle back down graciously. The doughnut receives me into its hollows once more.

Then starts a most fascinating symphony of rhythmic whirrs, buzzing, clicking and banging. It's such  a fabulous concert that it makes me wish I had a recording of it to share around. I'd call it the Symphony in B flat, as in - be flat or you'll muck up the recording.

Lo and behold, I discover that YouTube audios/videos of MRIs abound!!

On pain

It's a fickle syndrome, this nerve pain. I wake up to it and it consumes me and drains me of all energy. I can sometimes make it vanish by medicinal means, yet other times it persists despite the drugs.
Then I discover I can "will" it away simply by believing that it doesn't exist. When it starts to well up, I say to it "Oh no you don't!" and it quells.

So, is the pain real, or not? People experience phantom pain, for example in limbs that no longer exist. We use pain as an indication that something is amiss. But if we're capable of mentally blocking it as well, how reliable a signal is it for the inner workings of our anatomy?

Some interesting facts about nerve pain...

• Damaged nerves are more likely to misfire, sending pain signals when there is no cause for pain.
• All the causes of nerve pain are still largely a medical mystery. 
• Nerve pain can worsen at night.
• Techniques such as guided imagery, meditation, biofeedback, and hypnosis help some people with nerve pain live better. Finding the right professional at a reasonable price can be challenging. 

Anyhow, I've decided to push on through any nerve pain I get, and live my life as per normal. If there's anything seriously the matter still with my spine, I trust that the MRI will show it up. All the same, I'll postpone anything seriously strenuous until I have the OK from the physio and GP, post-MRI.

Doctor's orders

The good physio is deferring to the GP's expertise, but actually the GP echoes the physio's words almost to the letter. Kinda useful when they all agree with each other - so less confronting than when they have a bunfight over you - the patient.

The GP has ordered an MRI, with the instruction to let things settle for a week or so and hope that the pain goes away. She's also written me a referral letter for a neuro$$$urgeon.

The pain is, in fact, subsiding, and the patch of numb skin is receding in size. My right big toe begrudgingly moves a little, but only when I catch in unawares. If I make too much of a conscious effort at it, it has a spac attack and makes my brain hurt.

So-o-o-o, NOT

I seem to have grown a few inches taller, for all the couch-surfing I'm currently doing. I once had a vertically-challenged friend who (just) passed the minimum-height criterion for entering the metropolitan fire brigade simply by hanging up-side-down on a handstand machine for a few days before the examination and then getting his friends to carry him on a plank all the way from the machine in his lounge-room to the front door of the brigade, minutes before his examination.

Zap-Fizz-Ding

"I love my couch"
"I love my couch"
"I love my couch"

...which is just as well, as that's where I've been for the past three days, and where I'll stay for the next week at least.

So last Thursday I dutifully did my morning pull-ups and crunches on the hang-board in the hallway, and the niggling lower back-ache that's been pestering me on and off since last November suddenly took centre stage and began to holler angrily. Pedalling to work was not a problem but everything thereafter, including lying in bed that night, was NOT a joy. During the night, my sciatic nerve decided to join in to the chorus of pain and add some backing vocals.

By Friday morning I could only crawl, in spite of a stomach-full of painkiller drugs, and I was looking decidedly wretched by the time I slithered my pain-racked body into the physiotherapist's rooms. My right foot went on strike some time during the night and would only point down, not up, my right big toe had completely lost any capacity to lift itself, and a distressingly large patch of skin over my right foot and right lower leg seemed permanently asleep. Not great.

Physiotherapy is next to Godliness, in my books. After a quick diagnosis (herniated lumbar disc), the recommendation was a series of minutely gentle push-ups. RELIEF!!! I actually walked (limping) out of there. Without a single groan.

By order of the physio God - lay flat out like a lizard drinking for the next few days, take painkillers until your stomach rattles, and hope for the best.

So here I lie, on my comfy couch, catching up on all the nice podcasts I couldn't hitherto find enough sedentary time for listening to.

And three cheers for sick leave.

Gym bunny

Seasonal calendar for the Melbourne (Victoria) area.
Compiled by Dr. Beth Gott of the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University.

Start of April, end of Daylight Saving Time. Sunset happens closer and closer to Close of Business hour and the air is becoming decidedly chilly. By the European calendar, April is Autumn, and by the Indigenous people's seasons it's already early Winter. Feels like it, for sure.

The throng of climbers that gather weekly at the library wall is dwindling, and Climber Boy finally declares ... it's time!

Time to shift operations to the climbing gym.

I've seen photos of breathtakingly awesome climbing gyms that are massive human-made caverns containing every perceivable arrangement of protrusion, over which training climbers can contort themselves. Some are so realistically intricate that patrons need never venture to the outdoor world, finding all their needs for climbing challenges met amply within the confines of the synthetic.

The walls of these gyms are beautifully textured, to give the impression of gnarly rock surfaces, plus there are plastic handholds of varying degree of purchase (or lack thereof) bolted strategically into the walls to add further dimension. The holds are a multitude of bright, cheery colours, with individual routes marked out by same-colour holds.

The holds remind me of the globs of wet toilet paper that we used to throw high against the school toilet walls and ceiling; if you gauged the water content and throwing force just right, the glob would pack itself into a compact mound on impact that would stick nicely to the surface and dry there, creating an emblematic monument high above the ground, that you and your school-friends could admire for years to come.

Our two local climbing gyms are nothing like this.

Canberra's two public indoor climbing gyms consist of a large box-shaped space about two storeys high, with flat plywood-lined walls whose non-slip paint has long since been scrubbed off by the hoards of chalked hands and rubberised feet traversing it. For added effect, some of the walls have varying degrees of backward lean to them, and some might have a leaning-back kick at the very top. Many of the walls also have oddly shaped boxes attached to them to act as mini obstacles. The walls are festooned with plastic holds, as in more salubrious gyms, but the vividness of their colour reflects their age - over time and traffic, all colours - regardless of their original brightness - tend towards the same brownish hue. It takes an experienced eye to discern these well-worn routes, and many a climber has been thrown off-route or left hanging in perplexity mid-route because of the blending of moulded plastic colour.

Our modest local indoor climbing gym, with the requisite patient non-climbing parent on belay duty to keen young child.

In front of each wall hangs a sparse curtain of ropes to which carabiners are securely attached at either end. Each rope is anchored to the floor at one end (the belayer's end), ascends to a pulley near the gym ceiling, and then plummets back to ground level and a double carabiner (the climber's end).

Dragon entrails.

The tortured squeals of the old pulleys, as each climber is lowered gently back to ground, can be heard from outside the gym. Inside the gym, the pulley squealing intermingles with raucous head-banger music that's meant to spur you into upbeat attack-that-wall mode. Judging by the the widespread flexing of exposed muscles (and both males and females abound here) it seems to work for most. I'm contemplating bringing my portable music player next time.

Not that I'm complaining, however. The nearest public climbing gym is but 5kms from home and a convenient cycle after work or on a cold weekend afternoon when rain is imminent.

CB fastens us to our respective ends of the gym rope and clambers up one of the brownish-hue routes while I belay and observe. The plastic holds might've been a lovely purple colour in their early days. CB shimmies up the wall, using the grippiness of the surface for purchase as much as the actual holds. By the end of two such routes his forearms are pumped and rock solid.

We swap over. I'm getting another "hospital rocks" moment, with a vertical wall looming above me and a multitude of hand and foot holds that seemed so obvious and useable when CB found purchase on them, having suddenly shrunk or morphed into smooth, slippery blobs on the wall.There's an added level of difficulty here in that you have to use only specific holds in order to pursue a route - and if they looked much the same colour from below, they're even more uniform from the front and above, where people have been grappling with their sweaty hands and rubber feet.

CB starts me on a blue-coloured climb made up of big, positive jugs. I hoist myself up, bit by bit, feeling stiff and unbalanced. It still amazes me how unintuitive this exercise is for my otherwise quite fit and nimble body.

About two metres from the top, the wall suddenly juts out above my head. I've reached this overhang and now I'm totally stuck. CB is calling instructions up to me. At this height, all I can hear is squealing pulleys, headbanger music, and the odd guttural groan from some Amazon man aping their stuff up in the bouldering deck. I'm looking at the holds on the overhang and my brain just has no idea how to tackle this. I'm hanging there contemplating my future, meanwhile my arms are screaming at me more and more loudly to "get the F*CK off this wall".

OK, time to let go.

CB lets me dangle up there for a while, hoping I'll swing back onto the wall after a rest and some contemplation time. But, no - I have a dragon at my heels again and the relos - cousin ICDI and auntie INGE - are engaging in a major brawl with my more logical mindset ... and winning hands down.

This little gym bunny needs some time out and a good cup of tea.

Mum's the Word, Dad's the Trick

My gorgeous man and I have been together now for about 4 months, and my parents – located 800kms away in another city - have started suspecting there’s been a major shift in my life.

Eventually I let on about the new love of my life, but my inner sense of self-preservation warns me against divulging many details. I tell my parents his name but don’t indulge them when they request his CV, and I artfully dodge their leading questions – What’s his profession? Where is he from? How old is he? They would deny this emphatically if they were to be called on it (I have tried this, in the presence of a professional mediator) but past unhappy experiences have taught me that my mother’s preconceived mental mould of who she deems to be a “suitable” partner from me deviates wildly from my actual personal preferences. Moreover, letting on to her that I’ve made yet another life choice that falls short of her expectations (be it in regard to relationships, career, lifestyle, attire, or the colour and length of my hair) is tantamount to sticking my head in a lion’s mouth and then getting upset when I end up with teeth marks around my neck.

My mother’s work colleagues must have discovered this too, as the office once gave her a cartoon with “Agree with me now; it will save so much time,” which she obligingly pinned up on her office wall.

So I let sleeping lions lie. Lying by omission, perhaps!? Well, they say that “it's better to beg forgiveness, than ask permission,” particularly when it comes to (those who imagine themselves to be) authority figures. So the topic of Climber Boy’s passion for precipitous rock walls, and my new-found pastime in scaling them with him, is never broached.

That is, until I discover, alas – too late – yet another of my mother’s well-camouflaged spies, who I have naïvely befriended on good ol’ Facebook.

I’ve managed to stave off several attempts by my mother to open a FB account over the years. As it turns out, however, this (now ex-) Facebook friend of mine has been her FB proxy on numerous occasions. This time she has noticed my change of relationship status and has gone off and reviewed my beloved’s profile. Facebook’s privacy algorithms never cease to bewilder me. CB has his FB account adequately protected, to be viewed by authorised friends only, but FB still displays his profile image to the world at large. And since CB has no reason to hide his outdoor love from anyone (blessed soul), his FB profile image shows him happily harnessed to the side of a vast slab of steeply sloping granite in mid-space, surrounded by ropes and protective climbing gear, and looking for all the world like he’s reclining in his lounge room.

“So,” my mother ventures on our next phone call, “he goes rock climbing!? C… told me she saw the photo on FB.”

This pointed question - as much a statement as a query- followed by a pregnant pause. Apparently it’s now my turn to fill in the gaps.

The game is over. My mother knows me waaaaaaaaay better than to be led to believe that I’ll stand idly by and watch someone else indulge in the excitement of a new adventure without jumping in boots and all.

“Yes, he’s a rock climber,” I stammer warily. I’ve said too much already; I’ve put it in general terms instead of simply portraying it as a once-off activity undertaken at some previous time and therefore not likely to be repeated. The tone of my reply leaves ample room in my mother’s panic-disposed mind to extrapolate to future activities involving me and mortal danger. She knows better than to say her piece right now, however; her modus operandi for gaining adequate control of a situation is akin to water dripping incessantly on stone, by her own admission. For now she holds her tongue … only just … but I can hear the mental cogs turning and the catapults being aimed at some future opportunity to speak her piece.

My father, by contrast, holds a remarkable surprise for me that quite blows my mind. I discover that he himself has done a good deal of rock climbing in his younger years, both in the Italian alps in the ‘50s and ‘60s and in the humble Brindabella Ranges in the ‘60s and ‘70s, where CB and I now hang out.

Monte Argentera (3297m ASL) - the highest peak in the Alpi Marittime range; it's formed by gneiss (a widely distributed type of metamorphic rock of glittery appearance) and local outcrops of granite.

In fact it’s not at all out of character for him to have done something so adventurous in pre-married life, nor for him to never have mentioned it to me before now. Like me, he has learned to maintain his silence when within earshot of my mother. And given that she monitors his every word to me when we’re talking by phone, interjecting regularly when she considers him to have erred (at least once in every sentence), there’s never much opportunity for him to share any of his inner workings with me. Our phone conversations are commonly restricted to a formulaic pattern that rarely deviates from a brief exchange of pleasantries.

Scaling the sides of Monte Argentera, c1950.

I ask him about his climbing experiences and he describes day-long rocky ascents in the Alpi Marittime with his boyhood mates, wearing hob-nailed leather ankle boots and (only occasionally) a “safety” rope tied around their waist and joining the climbers together. Theirs wasn’t climbing for its own sake like ours largely is – their aim was to gain high vantage points from which to enjoy spectacular views across the rooftop of Europe. When they camped overnight, they availed themselves of the rifugi alpini (mountain shelters) – basic but well-equipped mountain resorts made of rough stone and/or timber, generally comprising a bathroom, kitchen, bedrooms and a dining room.

Rifugio Pagarì & La Maledia peak (3061m ASL), c1949.

Climbing school at Maiano, c1953.

Likewise in the Brindies – dad’s hob-nailed leather boots sufficed equally well on the granite slabs as on the sheer faces of the alps, and he and his Italian climbing buddy Lazzaro scaled several routes that are still to be found in current-day climbing guides.

Lazzaro's Staircase - a Grade 16, 20m crack at Booroomba Rocks, Namadgi National Park - was first climbed by my dad's friend Lazzaro Bonazzi (with Peter Aitchison) in 1969.

I can tell from the ever-so-slightly raised pitch in dad’s voice that he’s impressed with my newly acquired hobby, in the same way that he was when I took up motorcycling several decades ago. There’s no such thing as an ex-motorcyclist, someone once pointed out to me, and I believe this to be the case with any passion.

The Wall

Pink Floyd had it so right when they sang "I have become comfortably numb".

Typical library-goers on a Canberra summer evening.

Summer training for Canberra-based rock climbers involves spending lots of time at the National Library of Australia - studious lot, we are!

Never under-estimate rock climbers' capacity for finding climbable surfaces in any landscape and using them for pet bouldering projects and/or climbing practice.

Bouldering is a form of rock climbing that's done on boulders (duh!!) or any other rock-like surface - such as the external blue-stone wall of the National Library of Australia ground floor. Bouldering is generally done without ropes or harnesses but most folk use their climbing shoes and hand chalk to enhance grip - the idea is to practise climbing moves, build stamina and flexibility, and strengthen fingers and feet, all at a "safe" distance from the ground.

There are such things as bouldering mats, too - rubbery pads that are positioned under the bouldering surface so as to prevent fall injuries, but the architects of the NLA very considerately arranged for lush turf to be laid out at the base of each NLA wall, and from my personal experience I can vouch for its cushy landing properties.

On any summer evening, when daylight extends past formal office hours, a line-up of climbers is to be found traversing in formation - all the way left and then back to the right - most commonly on the northern NLA wall. Chalky fingerprints mark the popular hand holds, and also indicate the number of days since it last rained.

At some stage many years ago, the NLA security guards were numerous and bored enough to keep chasing climbers off The Wall. These days, however, climbers have free reign of the blue-stone and can relaxedly enjoy the idyllic surrounds, which often include gentle music emanating from the outdoor café/bar on the terrace above the northern wall.

Walls aren't created equally

Bouldering along the northern-facing longer NLA wall.

One assumes that the brickies who laid down the big blue-stone bricks at the NLA simply hauled them off the palettes and onto each wall stack in random order. No specialist stone-masonry skills were required, as the bricks are all of the same shape and size in two directions. So unless those brickies were closet climbers, the sequence of face scoops and ridges laid out across the blue-stone walls must have been laid out randomly.

As it happens, the random sequence (as well as the relative lengths of each wall section) has effected a hierarchy of difficulty for bouldering at the NLA.

The northern, longer wall of the NLA is the most popular; its length, and degree and sequence of bumpiness, lend themselves nicely to testing the stamina of the average competent climber without totally pissing them off. It has the added bonus of providing an interesting extension for those who can manoeuvre their way around the left-most 90-degree corner and continue along the shortish eastern wall. The polished nature of potential footholds and finger grips right along the northern longer wall attests to its long-term and ongoing favour with self-respecting local climbers.

The northern medium-length wall, and the west-facing longest wall, are frequented only by demi-Gods with wings and/or suction cups for fingers and toes. If you're lucky, you might know a friend of a friend who has conquered the Great Long Western Wall of the NLA. Champagne parties have been thrown on completion of a full traverse.

The north-facing shortest wall, by contrast, is for weenies and newbies such as me - it's only six blue-stone bricks long, is devoid of awkward ventilation grills pumping out musty book vapours, and many of the stones have gratifyingly definite finger holds and foot ledges. Since no self-respecting climber would be seen dead hanging from this "easy" wall, the scoops and edges are also as beautifully rough (read grippy) as when they were first chiseled, rather than being polished perilously smooth like the more popular walls are. This wall is my friend.

Go hang

My first visit to The Wall was last summer: January 2014. Climber Boy and I dutifully rode our bikes there one evening after work and joined the growing throng of chalk-fingered folk milling about on the lawns in front of the northern walls. CB stepped up onto the longer wall and stuck there like he was glued on, then deftly padded his way to the left, stone brick by stone brick, gently placing hand and foot in sequence and moving his body in smooth progression. Quite beautiful, really. Then I stepped up onto the wall ... and just as quickly slithered right off. Then again - on ... off ... on ... off ... on ... offfffffffff ... FCUK OFF in fact!! Temper redlining already ... CB holding out at the other end of the longer wall and wisely keeping his distance now.

OK, let's try the short north wall. The fact that no-one else is hanging off it makes me immediately suspicious, but I manage to rally my nerves just enough to have ... YET ANOTHER ... go. CB good naturedly shows me how it's done; he steps on and - again - sticks there steadily ... no surprises there. I step on, somewhat more tentatively, positioning fingers and feet on the exact same scoops and edges on which CB found purchase so apparently effortlessly ... and remain suspended there for a fraction of a microsecond before peeling off and leaving at least the first few thousand surface molecules of finger skin behind, smeared onto the coarse blue-stone surface. Another two goes at this and I'm practically devoid of fingerprint ...

OK, enough pain and humiliation for one day.

On my subsequent visits to The Wall I bring a sarong. I have a few goes at The Wall, until my finger pads are red and too sensitive to bear any further contact, then quietly perform my yoga routine on the lawn while the climbing community executes their traverses behind me. I intersperse asanas with another step on - peel off skit. The microseconds in between the two sometimes stretch to milliseconds; never long enough for me to progress to the next hand or foot hold, but my finger pads are gradually leathering up and losing sensitivity - which can only be a good thing - thanks to the constant sand-papering they're receiving.

As I said - comfortably numb!