a bit of medical stuff

Congratulations to William Sichel on his recent win in the 8 day race in Monaco.

My new exercise regime continues with much more cycling for the next few weeks.  I imagine that, on average, I'll soon be up to an hour cycling per day.  It's not all at a steady pace though, there are a few options:

- after a suitable warm up alternate 8 mins hard with 2 mins easy.  The hard work to feel like mile pace
- after a suitable warm up alternate 15 mins hard with 5 mins easy.  The hard work to feel like half marathon pace.
- once a week I'm cycling for at least 2 and a half hours.  The equivalent of a long run , I suppose.

At the moment I'm cycling every day when I should be running.  I'm also doing the normal weight training and stretching.

I don't expect to notice any improvement in achilles and heel pain (which is not severe at all, except when I run !!!) for a few weeks yet.  In the meantime though I feel that I'm doing all I can to maintain as much fitness as possible whilst treating the injury.

This morning I happened to catch a news item on BBC about cancer and how survival rates in the UK are much better than they were 10 or more years ago.  Reading around this story I also found out that that the important drug in my chemotherapy regime, cisplatin, has a number of side effects:

(1) kidney failure.  When in hospital the staff made me drink lots and lots of water, the theory being that if I urinated lots this could be collected and analysed for early signs of damage.  I remember one particular night when I passed 14 litres of urine between 11pm and 6am.  Without much sleep.

(2) hearing loss.  This explains quite a lot.  For a few years after cancer treatment I suffered with tinnitus but gradually that disappeared to be replaced with a different hearing disorder which has two symptoms:  (a) there is a narrow range of frequencies which I just cannot hear at all - car alarms, mobile phone ring tones, smoke alarms, etc; (b) I find it difficult when there is background noise to hear things which I would otherwise have no trouble with at all.  Having said that I can have a normal conversation over 90% of the time.

(3) electrolyte imbalance.  I already knew about the above side effects but this one is new to me.  It particularly effects magnesium, potassium and calcium levels apparently.  I wonder how long that lasts, is it short term during treatment or is it long term like the hearing loss ?  And does the severity vary from person to person ?  Could effect ultra distance running ...

Does anyone out there have any thoughts ?