Skoda Rally Blog

Those of you who know me (and indeed those who have read this blog for a while) will know that I’ve suffered with a dodgy back for years (about 20 years), since someone nearly broke my back in a fight.  Well, I say ‘fight’, he attacked me from behind (coward), and since then I’ve suffered nearly annually with back problems, despite having spent a lot of time doing exercises that I’ve been told to and so on.  However, this time has been different.  Usually after a couple of weeks of intense pain, and about 6 weeks overall, I’m back to normal.  However, 4 weeks in (this started in early October) I started to feel numb feet, and it turns out that this is a sign of a ‘slipped’ disc.  Not good.  And usually takes about 6-8 weeks before it heals.  However, as you can probably imagine, that hasn’t been how it’s gone.  The back pain has been constant every day, and the numbness has developed into pain.  Long story short, I’ve had an MRI scan, which has shown this:

My dodgy back.

The light grey line down the middle is my spinal cord, and you can see that near the bottom there’s a black bit sticking into it; that’s my disc, and the squeezing is why my feet feel funny and it hurts there.   I don’t want this to turn into some long medical thing, just an explanation of the lack of progress or activity recently.  I’m having an injection into it on Wednesday which should help, but the outcome is uncertain.  I’ve not been able to do much of anything since October 4th, which is getting very tedious, and I can’t sit down for any length of time.  Driving is the worst activity of all, so if the injection doesn’t help, I won’t be driving anyway.

But there has been progress!  A desperate plea on Facebook saw a reply from Kev Jackson, who has been round this morning with his friend Cassie and between them (with a bit of direction from me), the engine and gearbox are OUT of the car – more progress than has happened in 4 months.  I have bought a replacement engine for the car, and it’s being delivered some time this week, so with any luck in a couple of weeks’ time the car will have a new engine in place in it, and hopefully it’ll be done in time for the Sunseeker, and I will also be in a position to drive the damn thing.

It’s all very up in the air, and it seems a very remote possibility, but if there’s any way it’s humanly possible, I will be doing it in the Skoda; this episode has already been a bit of a nightmare meaning a withdrawn entry on the Exeter Trial (which eventually was cancelled anyway because of the snow), a miserable time at Christmas (as I can either lie down or stand up, nothing else really), and also missing out on a snowboarding holiday.  Hopefully the Sunseeker won’t be added to the list.