The last month has been very up and down. I started to make some small progress in my running, getting my long run up to 7km (woohoo lol). The rehab work has been coming along nicely and I’ve been maintaining the constant movement and walking.

That’s the ‘up’ parts. The down parts this month were mostly getting this or that virus and having to bunk down, each time for a few days in front of Netflix wearing my sheep slippers. I’ve no idea why I seem to get so many of these things that are going around but a friend of mine has said the same thing. So at least I have company.

Nonetheless, I’ve been bouncing back to fitness in between each bout of Netflix boredom and getting back to sporty like things.

Recently I feel a lot better (touch wood) but now I have a new friend, who is going to stop me running for the new few weeks. I’ve named my mate ‘Ant’ because it looks like an ant crawled across my right eyeball then died there or else went into permanent hibernation.

Unbeknownst to me a permanent floater whilst generally harmless can be extremely serious. I’d had Ant for a few weeks and did nothing about it as I really didn’t know this. Thankfully I finally stopped off at the opticians on Thursday and asked to see someone. When I told them what was up they said I needed to see someone with 24 hours as it can potentially cause retinal detachment. What now??

An appointment was set up at another place the next day. Needless to say my sleep was not great that night. The next morning I went along to get my eyeballs looked at. It was the first time for me getting the dilation drops. They are kind of fun aren’t they.

He said at the beginning that this is a sign of getting older and it’s called PVD (posterior vitreous detachment) and is mostly nothing to worry about. However, in 15% of cases it causes a tear in the retina and in a small number of people it causes full retina detachment. In those cases you need to get it fixed right away.

How come I never heard of this before? The PVD bit on its own happens to most of us eventually. I think its something like 75% of people over the age of 70 and a lot over the age of 50.

I found myself getting irritated by how long it was taking him to stare into his little machine turning a dial this way and that way; simply waiting to hear the words….. ‘yes its just PVD, you can go home now’. Instead at the end of the review, he said ‘hmmm’.

What does he mean, hmmm?.

That isn’t what I wanted to hear.

‘What’s up – is everything ok?”.

“I’m not sure” he says.

He went on to explain that I had some spots of blood at the back of my eye from a small haemorrhage and that he couldn’t rule out a tear because he couldn’t see all of my eye with his equipment.

So this was on the Friday and he referred me to the hospital to get it fully checked out on the Monday. This meant a less fun weekend of waiting to find out. I realise that even a tear is not a disaster. They simply laser it, maybe you get a cool eyepatch (I’m not sure – but I wanted one) and off you go. But its none the less not nice to be in limbo not knowing.

Thankfully on Monday after I went for a very cool test in which he stuck a small magnifying glass thing (with a small suction pad) on my eye, it was confirmed no tear. Hurrah. The mediocre bad news was that I shouldn’t lift weights or run for another 2 weeks as apparently in the early stages you are more prone to a tear. So fair enough then.

I got up on Tuesday morning and went to the gym to walk 4km on the treadmill and do all my rehab exercises; just without weights. It’s all good and I was in a great mood now I know what is going on. So thats when I named him. Ant, that is. Now he is harmless, he is allowed to be my friend.

Ant will not actually disappear but apparently my brain will eventually stop seeing him. For now he is keeping me company.

I’ve put my physio visit back two weeks and I’ve cancelled my big race for 2026 (because seriously that is just not happening now) but other than that life is good and I’m getting stronger and better at my single leg balancing exercises all the time. Maybe eventually I will be able to stand on the wobble board with one leg and juggle! I might have to learn to juggle first though.

In a few weeks I’ll be back running and finally able to build that up again and maybe even start planning some lovely longer runs.

In the meantime I can walk, so I’m walking as much as I can. I’d love to get over 40km this week – it’s nice to have a mini goal.