Sweden redeems itself

I was very upset at Sweden this afternoon.

I guess I should start at the beginning. Some of you already know that I hurt my back the other week (especially Maddy and Jesper who spent half the time trying to fix it for me). Basically it just got to that point where you have left it so long the whole thing seizes up and you can't move anymore. That's never actually happened to me before and it really is excrutiating. I was in so much pain I couldn't even lie down. It was awful. After a hot shower and lots of aspalgin I managed to sort of sit down, bolt upright in Katty's room. Unfortunately they were watching Bill Bailey comedy and it was absolutely hilarious. Of course if you can't lie down you most certainly can't laugh (hell... I could barely even smile) so I had to retire back to our room and stand in the middle of it. Needless to sat it wasn't very fun and I looked like an absolute dork.

So the search for a physio in Sweden began and I finally found a sjukgymnast (impossible to pronounce so very hard to ask for one... the sj on the front is sort of said like a "wh" and the g is cancelled out... bah... not as hard to say as nurse though which is sjuksköterska (let's not even go there)). So I found one and had an appointment today.

I went along happily expecting a lot of cracking and got nothing. Really... the woman basically told me I should sit up straight and try doing some extension exercises. I asked if they didn't do manipulative physio in Sweden and she said she did but she usually got people to try the exercises before she touched their spine. I tried to explain that I had been doing those exercises every day for years and all I really needed was for her to loosen the brick of a vertebrae which is stuck in the middle of my back right now, but to no avail. So now I have to go away travelling for five weeks with a joint that is so stuck it would take snow plough to move it (hmmm... now there's an idea).

As I sat on the train on the way home I got one of those overwhelming senses of homesickness that you often get when you feel helpless in another country. At home in Australia I would have known exactly who to go to... upper back pain Rosemary, Nick is good for lower backs or a quick fix, Zoran is good if your wrist is cracky etc. but here I just don't know who to turn to. So then I had the embarassing crying while surrounded by strangers thing... most people don't notice if you just close your eyes and try not to scrunch your face up too hard, but it's a bit difficult to hide the tears that pop out, roll down your cheeks and drip onto the newspaper of the person sitting next to you. Luckily this is Sweden so nobody asked if I was okay... an "are you alright mate" would probably just have ended up with me bawling all over someone's jacket. This is a problem with me... I can you usually pull myself together but as soon as someone asks if I'm okay that the end of it. "Are you alright?""Noooooo *blubber blubber*". Sympathy is not my friend when I am trying to be stoic.

But when I got off the train and started to walk home I noticed it had begun to snow. Really snowing... not just piddly snow but big fluffy flakes that you can actually watch piling up (albeit slowly) on the ground. I decided to take a detour on the way home and walk down to Lappis beach (not much of a beach by Aussie standards but still). When I got down there I was amazed to see an expanse of pure white all the way out to the other side of the water. I know water freezes in Winter but for some reason I didn't expect this... where there had been lapping water in January now there was just white. And it was so so beautiful. I forgave Sweden immediately for it's sjukgymnaster (I think that's the plural) and stood there feeling supremely happy, the only sound the paff paff of big snowflakes falling on me. That is the wonderful thing about Stockholm... we live 15 minutes from the city, and yet there is a forest right next to us and lakes and water and a beach. I stood there for quite a while until the spell was broken by the sound of an ice-cream truck doo doo doo doo du du du du du du... the most annoying sound ever (who the hell wants to eat ice-cream when it's -2 outside?).

I realised when I got home I must be getting used to the weather cause I wasn't cold even though it was below 0 and I wasn't wearing my thermals, although my face did appear to be somewhat frozen. But at least it was frozen into a smile =).