I walk fast, I always have done. In part it's a physical thing as being tall means I need fewer steps to get somewhere than many other folk (I have a higher cadence). On the other hand natural impatience also plays a part. I don't like to dawdle; I'm a rush-hour train-commuter on a schedule who doesn't like delay. Suffering coordination and balance disorders which impact on walking offers a unique and unwelcome insight into life in the slow lane. Maybe it's payback time for years of commuting intolerance.
I had a preview of slow living a few years a go when I strained my big toe. It sounds trivial but it was agony and left me hobbling around for a week. Suddenly it took me twice as long to get anywhere by foot and I was regularly over-taken by pensioners on their way to the shops. This was an eye-opener but completely different to my experience with CLIPPERS.
Pre-treatment and pre-investigation for CLIPPERS my main problems related to walking were balance related. Walking down an empty corridor was relatively straightforward. On the other hand, suddenly the pavement on the route I took every day to the station suddenly seemed quite narrow; the busy road on one side and low fence on the other side were too close for comfort. I would feel increasingly nervous of people coming from the other direction as my ability to reliably keep to one side was eroded. Imagine the difference between walking confidently along a wide plank and teetering along a tight-rope! With double vision!! Another challenge was getting down the middle of crowded flights of stairs safely when I couldn't reach the hand-rail.
While under investigation in hospital my coordination started to go as well. I could still walk around with care but long fluid strides were slowly tranforming into a shuffle. In the hospital environment this wasn't too noticeable - not too much hiking to be done! - but came with other coordination problems like difficulty tying shoe-laces, doing up buttons and writing coherently.
After I got out of hospital and moved onto the prednisolone taper things changed. My balance improved quickly and fluid walking returned. However with these walking "glitches" (which I've discussed elsewhere) I could be speeding along like normal and suddenly break down and jerk about like an automaton. So I've had to learn to recognise the warning signs (light-headedness and a tight feeling in my legs) and take it easy and just slow down in general so the glitches aren't so obvious. At the moment (half-way through the prednisolone taper and about to move from 40mg/day to 30mg/day) balance is near normal and the glitches are still reducing in intensity and frequency. I even successfully ran for the train the other day! I'm enjoying it while it lasts as the experience of others suggests this could be the calm before the storm, or at least the drizzle. I'm also trying to voluntarily stay out of the fast lane and take things a bit easier.
Read other articles in this series at Living With CLIPPERS.
Living With CLIPPERS by Bill Crum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
