A Double Fractured Spine, Partial Blindness, and Drowning In Bullshit (My Fortnight)

Doctors, Sky TV Ripoff, Klarna Con and More

Double-stress fracture in the pars interarticularis of the vertebral arch

While parts of the world cowers in dreadful chaos, I'm having to deal with enough to make writing – my job, here on TTT – more difficult this past fortnight; so this is an explanation of the difficulties I'm having in providing content, to you – the paying subscribers – at my usual rate; and not a case of woe-is-me.

There's also a bit of ranting about Sky TV, and its general unhelpfulness, and also misleading the public; plus how Klarna enabled the theft of my identity, and I'm threatened with court as a result.

So, it's been a fortnight of hospital appointments and administration bullshit. (Hell, it’s been a month or two of it, but it’s peaked this international break.)

It's been a saga, but I also need to vent some frustrations, and try to find some humour as well; writing is my way of processing the world, after all. (As is interpretive dance, but I save that for 11pm on random street corners.)

As I've explained various times, I've had M.E. for decades now, but mostly managed it okay, if I generally stay at home most days, and do a few hours writing each day.

(Going to the game is a big deal; I do so now and again, clearly, but suffer for days afterwards; not helped by the last few trips seeing all – yes all! – motorways closed as we head back south after night games, so that it has ended up taking five hours to get back to Leicester in 2023 games, instead of half that time.)

Generally I have about two properly productive hours a day (after coffees!), then maybe two more that I drag out if necessary; and on a hyper day, two more, if I'm raging about referees, or if a game is taking place and I’m running on adrenaline.

I write very quickly, as I’ve become a super-quick typist from 25 years of doing little else; but the editing can be tiring. (And when I edit, I take stuff out, and add some more.)

As an aside, I was born with severe eczema and asthma, and various allergies, perhaps as my mother was unable to keep down anything other than milky wheat cereal during the pregnancy. I didn't get one of those proper privileged immune system thingies, but playing lots of sport as a kid helped, I think (albeit I nearly died of an asthma attack in 1990 and it may have triggered the M.E. that developed over the coming years, and I never felt 100% right afterward December 1990, even when playing as a semi-pro – with hair).

(The guy marking me was about 6’4”, as I’m 5’10”, honestly!)

I had good sporting genes, but also genes passed down after one grandfather spent three years in the trenches of WWI, and returned fairly physically and mentally broken, before later starting a family; while my mother, before I was born, nearly died in a car crash – six weeks in traction, broken spine, leg, arm, cheekbone, nose, etc. – a decade after her older sister was killed under the wheels of an oncoming car - bizarrely, driven by a later world-renowned genius (I’ve shared the story before, but want to write more about it in due course) – when her new husband’s motorcycle skidded on the way to Liverpool from London. Only now am I wondering what intergenerational ‘trauma’ this kind of thing causes, via inherited nervous systems and via behaviours, but that's another story.

Anyway, the past few years (possibly starting with having to rush to A&E after an allergic food reaction in 2019 that saw my whole body turn red (see photo of my side, below), as if I was taking this Liverpool lark too literally (and my heart-rate remained in cardio even when I finally got to sleep at 4am), lots of things have been happening to my health that I kept putting down to M.E., and maybe just getting older; before realising many were likely something else.

The past year or so I tend to rest in/on bed for 6-10 hours a day, spread at intervals across 8am to 12pm, but mostly from the late afternoon or evening onwards, listening to music, podcasts, more music, audiobooks, and yet more music (often in the dark).

The more I do earlier in the day, the sooner I burn out. I may rest for 1-2 hours, then do some work for a little while; and if I do do something in the evening I have to make sure I do less in the day in the buildup.

Plus, my eyesight has been getting weird, and my right eye started to show signs of a loss of peripheral vision in 2021 with some increased eye pressure, when I was referred to the NHS eye hospital. (M.E. affects your vision, as I took part in three university studies on the issue; but it’s temporary and would always bounce back to baseline on good days.)

I also developed ptosis in my right eye 3-4 years ago, which means the eyelid doesn't fully open; “It can be congenital or acquired, or it can be neurogenic, myogenic, aponeurotic, mechanical, or traumatic in origin” says Google. So, that's clear!

(You can see on the photo below that my right eye doesn’t open properly, albeit this is not the clearest photo showing it; ones that show it clearly make me look deranged. I also tend to wear garments that are not open at the back, certainly out in public.)

I've also generally put off going to the GP since 2020 as all my GPs (six) left after the pandemic, and the place is a mess; but other local surgeries filled up with the exodus of patients, and are now struggling too.

And after the pandemic there was a sense of not putting strain on the NHS, who were suddenly not there to help you, but you had to help them by going away and being ill on your own.

(I understood that earlier in the pandemic, at least, but the sense seemed to linger. Even the emergency services are scarily slow. When I found my mum collapsed at her home one morning almost a year ago to the day, it took a couple of hours to get an ambulance; the staff were great, and they whizzed us to the hospital with flashing lights … where we waited outside in a queue for about four hours, before she was in the queue to be seen; and then ultimately left in a hallway somewhere at 3am, as no beds were available. Again, lots of great staff, a few arseholes. The next five weeks were spent visiting mum in various hospitals, which coincided with the relaunch of TTT on Substack, and started what has possibly been the most stressful year of my life, give or take one or two.)

I went private for prostate pain in 2021, at which point I had more men with their fingers inserted than <insert gag here>. Turned out that I have an enlarged prostate (the one thing down there that you don’t want to grow in size); but the medication made me feel hideous. I'm getting old, and once past 50 you have to expect some issues. I live with that.

Anyway, I've recently had to self-fund for various private tests, scans and consultations, as the NHS is just unable to offer very little, it seems; after decades of neglect (the NHS, not me – I do my best to look after myself within my very limited parameters, or I feel even worse). Even the private services are being overrun as people use their savings to bypass the NHS that they pay their taxes for.

In January I was texted by the NHS, asking if I still wanted my appointment. I was on a waiting list for something else from eons ago too. I said yes, and was told to turn up at the eye hospital the next week.

As you can see in the photos below, not only were there no spare seats, there was no room in the corridors.

(Behind me, the corridor was full of loads more people.)

As I look healthy, I can’t really ask for a seat, either.

It seems that they did a mass dump of their waiting list (and on their waiting list). How to lower the waiting lists? Make it impossible or untenable to actually be seen.

And after an hour I felt too unwell to continue standing, so booked an Uber home; only confirming my decision after a woman noted to the staff that she'd been waiting three hours, and would someone be seeing her soon? It felt like The Optical Squid Game, to see who could survive to get their eyes looked at.

At that my point my vision felt relatively stable, so I wasn't panicking. But it suddenly got much worse this summer (which sounds like a The The song, riffing on an old film; and yes, I was going out of mind).

I developed pain, double vision and blurring in my right eye, and my optician referred me to a private eye hospital after I failed the peripheral vision tests again, and the eye pressure had increased to red-zone levels.

By this point I'd already requested a brain and lumbar MRI, via a neurologist, who didn't seem too concerned at my symptoms of dizziness, headaches, various back and neck pains, and fainting, with my right leg feeling especially weak at times.

(If you mention that you have M.E. to a medical professional, then in virtually all my time with the condition going back to a diagnosis in 1999 – the one exception – they tend to think you've just told them that an alien has given you an anal probe on their spaceship from the planet Garzob. They were taught via radical psychologists in the 1980s that it's all in the mind, which persists, despite increasing masses of – admittedly disparate and unlinked research – that shows defects and deficiencies in all kinds of areas relating to energy production in cells and muscles, as well as the brain. Thankfully some of this research is now being gathered, in light of Long-Covid overlap. It perhaps doesn’t help that a few noisy ‘spoonies’ are, like a lot of people on social media, bloody-well crazy and insanely attention-seeking, and give the rest of us a bad name.)

I'd also booked in to see a private GP at this point, thinking it made sense to get an overview; and in her letter after our initial consultation (addressed to my GP who was one of those who left years ago) noted that my issues were likely “anxiety based”, and “anxious but otherwise well”. (I get copied in to these letters.)

She did refer me to an ENT specialist, however; a nasal endoscopy last week allowed the surgeon (who is a Mr and not a Dr – because he's a surgeon – which is a baffling British quirk) to diagnose LPR, or Laryngopharyngeal reflux, which causes the throat and larynx to get very inflamed and feel clogged; explaining another of my more recent symptoms, which was a sense of a constricted throat, especially when laying down (which I do a lot of).

But even my huge honking great hooter was partially blocked on one side, with a deviated septum added to the list of discoveries. This was either the day before or the day after my neurology follow-up; it's all blurred into one.

Anyway, rather than the neurologist actually viewing the scans, he read the results via his phone in a 2-minute follow-up, for which privilege I paid an ungodly sum. A trapped nerve in back, he said, and brain was fine. He could refer me to a back surgeon. I said no, as I don’t want surgery, unless it gets unbearable.

Except, I just got the letter through with the full imaging report, and the brain MRI report mentions “white matter hyperintensities” which can be linked to MS, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The quantity wasn’t flagged for alarm, but it was still noted.

(And I would expect the neurologist, with a PhD in reading brain scans, to actually view the scans; and look at what these were, given my concerns, and not just look at the results on his phone because the scans were on a different system at a different hospital, as otherwise I’d have had to wait until December for an appointment.)

But more intriguingly, I discovered that rather than just a trapped nerve, L5 lumbar vertebrae is an absolutely shitshow, with some issues requiring immediate attention (and the scan was about five weeks ago now).

"There are chronic bilateral defects in the L5 pars interarticularis [spondylolysis, aka stress fractures], along with marginal anteroposition of L5 on S1, a small broad-based posterior disc bulge, and flavum/facet hypertrophy resulting in bilateral foraminal stenosis with L5 nerve root impingement (sagittal sequences images 8 and 16)."

In Layman’s Terms, via medical sites:

• Fractures on both sides of L5 vertebra (bilateral pars defects aka spondylolysis).

• Ligamentum flavum (LF) thickened ligaments (due to stresses placed on the spine).

• Bilateral foraminal stenosis - a condition in which degeneration affects both sides of a spinal segment.

• Anterolisthesis - slippage of the superior vertebral body relative the one immediately below.

• Broad-based disc bulge - means that 25 to 50 percent of the disc's circumference is bulging outwards

• L5 nerve root impingement. In most cases, it is caused by compression of one of the nerve roots that make up the sciatic nerve, usually the last lumbar nerve root ― L5 ― or the first sacral nerve root ― S1 ― as they exit the spine. The term "pinched nerve" is commonly used when describing the condition. … The symptoms of L4-L5 nerve damage are typically chronic lower back pain, numbness, tingling, and weakness that radiate to the legs and feet. Spinal nerve damage can be severe.

Slightly more than a trapped nerve! Perhaps some of this is common (5% of people have a stress fracture/spondylolysis, albeit not on both sides), but the combination doesn’t sound great.

As I haven't had a chance to speak to anyone about the results, I'm still trying to process this (any subscribers who know anything about this, let me know in the comments!). I have booked to see a private GP next week, the earliest I could get. (Another writing day out the window.)

Googling just the stress fracture of the back suggests immediate rest, and time off from work.

Also, for those still reading (well done!), Conor Bradley and Calvin Ramsay both recently have/had the same issue; indeed, mine, as chronic (longstanding) could date back to my playing days and even to their age, as it's most commonly seen in growing boys/men in their teens, but also from various sports that involve twisting movements.

Or, it could be something I've developed more recently (but not super-recently). Either way, the rest of the back issues are now creating pressure, pain and weakness, and the trapped sciatic nerve is more of an issue.

One of my symptoms has been the sense of my right leg half giving way; not fully collapsing but suddenly feeling weak.

Plus, the sciatic pain is down the right leg, along with Restless Legs Syndrome, for which I take a Parkinson's medication (Ropinirole), otherwise I can fully awaken 30 times a night, often within a minute or two of getting to sleep (genuinely like a form of sleep torture), with unbearable sensations like being tickled inside your veins and muscles.

RLS may sound trite (another of those annoying Syndrome names that makes it sound irrelevant, but no one calls it by its proper name of Willis–Ekbom disease*), but the two nights I've not taken Ropinirole in the last two years I did not get proper sleep before 6am according to my FitBit. As such, Ropinirole is pretty important to me.

(* I did get a good consultation with the NHS sleep clinic a couple of years ago, having requested it a couple of years earlier.)

Anyway, last week (before or after the neurologist), the ENT realised – as we discussed my symptoms – that when I’d switched to the Buteyko breathing method in 2020 (via the excellent book “Breath” by James Nestor), I'd managed to lessen my asthma symptoms and gain about 10% extra energy each day by stopping all mouth-breathing* – but my extremely atopic responses, as a glutenous allergy-hoarder, were now going into my vacuum cleaner of a nose, causing headaches, sinus-type pain and other issues.

(* I read that players like Erling Haaland follow this advice, and sleep with tape over their mouth so as to breathe through the nose. Given my frequently half-blocked nose, I didn't dare go so far!)

It suddenly made sense, as it was during the pandemic that I discovered Buteyko via the book, which as noted, helped in some ways. I hadn't connected it to why I felt like I had frequent sinus pain and headaches ever since.

Anyway, as you can see, it's been a pretty hectic time. But that’s not the half of it. *Cue readers logging off in despair*

In amongst all this, I had full eye imagining at the private eye hospital, and was diagnosed with glaucoma.

(Good news: free eye tests on the NHS; albeit I already had them due to a family history of glaucoma.)

My optic nerve above the right eye has atrophied (where it’s blue instead of yellow/red), according to the explanation and the images, and as the vision of the eyes is inverted, it means permanent loss of vision in my lower right eye.

However, the blindspots also make for a smiley face (if you squint), which is nice.

(TTT just happens to have a subscriber who is a Professor of Optometry in the States, and he has been kindly offering advice via email. This community, since 2009 on the old site, has some brilliant people.)

So it seems that I've just been anxious about nothing, and as such, the subsequent diagnoses of glaucoma, Laryngopharyngeal reflux and a double back fracture with ligament and nerve damage are all figments of my overactive imagination. Silly anxious me.

Anyway, things got crazier earlier this week, in a less dramatic but incredibly time-sapping way (before I get on to being defrauded and ripped off by Sky).

There's a local (national?) shortage of Ropinirole, so I spent Monday literally going to half a dozen chemists, and then phoning others, far and wide; and they phoned the suppliers, who said there's a general shortage.

I found just eight tablets in a pharmacy an adjacent town, and none were in stock even in the huge Fosse Park pharmacies.

My GP surgery (28 admin staff and nurses, no full-time GPs) was not helpful when I asked for an alternative. They said go and ask a chemist for an alternative.

I took this to mean asking for something illegal; chemists can only hand out what is on the prescription.

Unable to get through on phone lines that I think were laid by Thomas Edison, I had to visit the surgery and ask someone to explain. Again, more time, more energy, more waste.

Turns out they meant for me to go and find out what alternative was in stock locally, then they'd write the prescription for that medication, albeit it takes three days to get a reply to anything and even longer to get a prescription.

(The Google reviews of my GP surgery for the past year are literally nothing but one star. Every single one. Again, having no doctors does that to a surgery.)

So I've spent a good chunk of this week so far sorting out Ropinirole. At least six hours, which is often 1.5 working days for me. So again, it’s hard to write articles and run a business (it’s accounts time), with all this going on.

Skyfall

Meanwhile, a week or two ago I tried to cancel aspects of my Sky subscription, including a landline I have't used for ages.

I'm currently paying almost £200 a month to Sky (TV, internet, landline, TNT), including for products I don't want and don't need.

Of course, I could not just cancel online, but had to speak to AI chatbots, AI phonebots, and finally someone on an unclear overseas line where it would be easier to decipher a Norman Collier routine. (Late '70s British comedy reference.)

To me, it sums up a lot about modern life, and a kind of hazing bullshit as everyone gaslights their way to success and covers up their gaffes and indiscretions.

Sky will take my money, but make it as hard as possible to have them stop taking my money.

Remember, this was just after Sky Sports chose to play down the Luis Díaz offside and not even draw lines at half-time, while in contrast, broadcasters across the world did that very thing, to get to the truth; then, Sky discussed it as an afterthought at half-time, after the last ad-break, and for a couple of seconds before the second half kicked off, in order to protect the product and treat viewers and fans like imbeciles.

This was by far the biggest story of the season, and they tried to bury it.

Nothing to see here, move along. Delay delay; hotline to the PGMOL, let's get our stories straight!

It sums up the current culture of ripping people off, lying to them, whilst they signal their virtue at you. It sums up a dishonest, corporate culture of contempt for its customers. They screw you, but tell you they're saving the planet or helping out the disenfranchised. Bullshit! There's now a show where Howard Webb gaslights the public, in the face of terrier interrogation by, er, Michael Owen.

I mean, it's 2023, you can't even cancel any Sky products online. I remember having this shit with AOL in 2003!

With the mere click of a mouse you can order ten Thai brides; a tin of baked beans to be droned over within 13 nanoseconds; a male stripper dressed as a policeman to dance on your doorstep; but you cannot cancel or alter (other than to add or upgrade) anything to do with your phone, broadband and TV online.

Not long after, in something unrelated but somehow connected, Sky tweeted a picture of the ball hitting Virgil van Dijk's hand against Brighton, that was labelled by Twitter/X as misleading – misinformation/disinformation – due to it not technically being handball if it deflects straight off a thigh:

By the laws of the game, this is not a handball. (The law states it is not a handball offence if a player ‘deliberately plays the ball which then touches their hand or arm’.)

They want our trust, but give us bullshit. Who is this for? Where's the context in a tweet like this? This is a kind of low-level misinformation, or disinformation, that in and of itself is perhaps harmless, but is part of a general trend that breeds mistrust.

Just like the PGMOL in general, and its various stories after big decisions go bad, and they post-rationalise and change their story like a con in the cells adapting an alibi to fit new evidence.

Integrity doesn't pay the bills or get clicks; lie, mislead, scam and upsell. All the while, no one seems to control their own social media output. Sky seem happy to mislead its audience.

They also drove me to distraction, and drain my bank balance. (Plus, my mortgage has doubled in the past year, and god-knows what the energy bills have increased by; but combined I now pay a small fortune for a three-bed semi.)

Anyway, here's how it went with the chatbot first, which like all time, is time I'll never get back, but also time where I wanted to poke out what remained of my two eyes. Here are some lowlights:

And cue … nothingness.

Dealing with Sky felt like dealing with a shifty drug dealer who is trying to get you hooked on his stronger substances, except you don't feel quite as used when being upsold crack in a seedy alleyway full of used needles and soiled condoms; all the while, Mr Sky is telling you he is a protector of the downtrodden, and, instead of addressing your request, asks have you seen his range of pamphlets about the disabled pygmy goats in Guatemala, because he really really really cares about doing good?

After an age on hold and offered music choices in keeping with the theme of the month (followed by the choice of R&B, dance and then finally rock; at which point I wonder if they should just play the ludicrously good and utterly bonkers 'Lovesexy'* by Prince and cover all bases, with the addition of about 57 other genres, albeit it is one of the filthiest records ever made), and I'm finally on the phone to some guy in a submarine on the other side of the world, who is speaking in unclear English through a tin can tied with a piece of string.

(* I listened to this again last night, and fuck me it’s good. But as I said, utterly filthy. The best thing Prince did was to make the CD one track, so you couldn’t skip the weird stuff; which in time meant I came to love the weird stuff.)

Except no, this guy can't do anything of the things I requested. He can, however, tie to me to an 18-month deal for what was BT Sport for a tiny monthly saving, though.

It seems that the guy in the sub cannot help cancel anything. It's not his job. Even though that's what I requested from the AI phone ‘woman’ before I was put through to him. (Almost anything I said the AI phonebot asked me to say again, as ‘she’ didn't understand.)

For a while it seemed that they were flying in experts from NASA, to see if someone could cancel my landline, but it was just a misunderstanding. (And NASA are possibly not that skilled.)

About an hour more of this nonsense during my peak writing time (they’re only open during working hours), and then the line went dead.

So … I'm still paying almost £200 a month to Sky.

At this point I'm not sure how to keep the parts of Sky I want and get rid of those I don't. At this point I'm tempted to just get rid of Sky full-stop, and find other companies (but I fear the same bullshit).

Truly, it would be easier to transition to the buried remains of Judy Garland and reappear as Dorothy than to get my landline cancelled. Even Alan Turing wouldn't be able to decode this one.

The Kafka Trap of When Identity Theft Isn't Identity Theft

To top it all, someone has 'half' stolen my identity, and I'm being prosecuted for their fraud.

I’ve just had a threatening legal letter over something someone ordered from Apple paying with the incredibly iffy Klarna.

Back in the summer, other letters had arrived, demanding payments for items I hadn't ordered, including from stores I'd never used. I wasted hours back then, explaining it all, after the usual trawl through AI bots and then barely-human halfwits.

Now I have the threat of a County Court Judgement against me for non-payment from the legal firm Shyster, Shyster and Shithead, despite my phone calls to Klarna to explain that someone was fraudulently using my details.

(Interestingly, there's no email or postal address on the legal letter, just a phone number.)

Klarna, it seems, allows people to steal your name and address to create an account and order stuff, using a burner phone and email address in the process, or their own phone number and email address if they are more brazen. Klarna don't ask for detailed ID, so they are brilliant for scammers. Welcome to 2023, where any shit goes.

The thieves then order goods delivered to another address (i.e. theirs).

I asked Klarna in the summer to tell me where the items “I” had ordered were delivered, and what the phone number and email address used were.

Sorry, can't do that – data protection act. (So good of them to be so concerned about that at this late stage.)

In a hilarious (not really) irony, the legal firm threatening to get a CCJ against me asked for my email address and phone number.

Sorry, you failed the data protection check.

Because ... how the fuck can I give a phone number and email address that are not mine, when the thieves are using my name and address and nothing else of mine?!

The goods are delivered to a different address. Data protection means you can’t ask where the things ordered in your name were sent, other than I kept telling them that I bet it wasn’t my address, as then I’d just get the stuff, and they wouldn’t.

The police/Action Fraud?

“You have indicated within your report that the misuse of your personal details or that of a company trading style played a part in the matter you are reporting. The use of another person’s identity, often referred to as identity theft, is not a police recordable crime. Where the details are used to obtain goods or services, we can only record a crime on behalf of the person or organisation which was defrauded as a result of the misuse of an identity.”

So, Apple are the ones being defrauded.

And I'm the one about to get a CCJ against him, and who has wasted hours and hours of valuable time and energy on this bollocks.

Klarna just continue to laugh.

I am in a kind of Kafka-trap. I cannot prove I wasn't the person who was saying they were me, using their phone and their email address and their delivery address. By this point I was losing the plot.

I then emailed Shyster, Shyster and Shithead, but obviously have not heard back yet. Hopefully it won't end up in court, and I won't have my credit rating trashed. But I'd also quite like to face them in court and expose the scam that Klarna benefit from.

So that's been a big chunk of my past fortnight.

As well as my medical bills now running into thousands, how do I calculate the loss of earnings from all the bullshit, given that this site only really gains new subscribers when new content is released?

(And if I cannot write as much for the next few months for medical reasons, who covers that? Not my critical illness insurance, as none of these are presumably critical enough. How do I continue to pay the site’s contributors if income falls, but I need them to cover for me?)

I guess I could have spent today writing about who plays left-back at the weekend, but this is easier to write (given that it's dominating my thoughts) than a more considered analytical piece of football writing.

There are good people in the world, doing good things; but it feels like we are increasingly drowning in bullshit, and mind-junk, and time-saps.

The entire world is living on the never-never, and football feels like bullshit too; overrun with owners who are sportwashing atrocities, or like so many businesses, borrowing, borrowing and borrowing some more, in the hope of success that will justify living in dreamland as they seek to crush the competition with Venture Capital speculation. (And if the clubs go bankrupt, c'est la vie – or ‘crest la vie’, as the bullshit browser autocorrect has changed it to half a dozen times.)

Anyway, I'll do my best to keep writing as often as I can, but obviously I have more medical tests ahead, and currently I hope to try physio before any back operations.

On the positive side, if I go fully blind I can perhaps cancel all my Sky TV packages and just rely on the radio from hereon in.

Anyway, <rant over> (Hope it wasn’t too self-indulgent.)

Again, no sympathy please, but just some understanding of what it takes to run a website with a chronic illness, and how additional problems can throw my finely-balanced routine out of whack. (And that’s before getting onto the PGMOL’s direct connection to my blood pressure.) I’ll do what I can, when I can, and I know the regulars will be fine with that, but I’ll still get lots of “not enough content” unsubscribes. It’s not simple when you are the product.

But crest la vie, as spellcheck so helpfully says.