I'm sorry it's taking me a bit longer to get back to everyone and I'm very sorry if I missed your email in my drug fuelled haze. Please do resend if you haven't heard from me. So it's been a month into what is estimated as a 12 month recovery. As my friend Ellis used to say when we were running Thursday night laps on the track at Parliament Hill, only 10 more after the next one. I'm feeling good, definitely more good days than bad days now. Still lots of leg twitching, I'm not sure my muscles have caught on yet they are not required to run up mountains a few times a week so are twitching and ready to go. Unfortunately it's a pretty awful feeling! Yesterday was a fantastic 'aid station', a whole day without pain killers, not even Tylenol. I have a deep ache in my hip but it's a 2/10 on the pain scale and doesn't warrant drugs. I'm also eating, which I missed! A diet of pain killers puts a serious dampener on the appetite. There has only been two times I my life where I have lost weight without thinking about it or trying. The first was three years ago when Pieter and I started out on our six month honeymoon by cycling across Tibet to Kathmandu for three weeks. Tough days were cycling up onto the Tibetan plateau and passes taking us up to 18,000 feet or 5,500m. Don't forget we had come from sea level having lived in London at the time. Or the day we descended over 30 miles or 50km in the snow, then sleet and finally freezing rain all with me dry retching from altitude sickness (my stomach had been emptied long ago on the way up the climb). We had a day of rest in Kathmandu, stored the bikes and immediately started our hike towards Gokyo not wanting to lose our altitude advantage. We went up from Lukla in three days, most people take 8-10 and went up so fast we gave our guide altitude sickness. I was pumping him full of aspirin and altitude medicine but the worst from him was the ribbing he got from the other guides. We crossed over Chola (17,782 ft or 5420m) in waist deep snow, following the tracks of a group from the previous day. At the top all you hear is the creaking and groaning of the glacier underfoot. Magic! We continued on up to Everest Base Camp and back down again to Lukla to take our flight to Kathmandu. No flights due to bad weather and a week of back logged angry hikers we decided to hike out doing 2 x 12 hour days to make it on our flight to Bangkok and drive the final "few hours". It was 12 hours in a jeep made for 5 passengers but had 10 smelly people squished in. After six weeks of relatively low calorie meals, and that was with having four meals a day when possible we both lost a tremendous amount of weight. I used to get a real kick out of the fact most tea houses in Nepal offered four meals; stir fry noodles, spaghetti, chow mein and I forget what the 4th was called. It didn't matter what you ordered, it was all from the same big pot in the kitchen. That was certainly a more fun way of losing weight without effort than breaking my hip. Some of it is loss of muscle off both legs. Suddenly stopping all physical activity, and for me that was hiking, running, swimming, biking and gym sessions meant my muscles just melted away. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't looking like the ladies in the video but I was in decent enough shape. The other reason is that I think all energy goes to the broken part of your body to heal you so any calories are zoomed to that area. The human body never ceases to amaze me how it can repair itself, with a little help from some titanium rods and screws! Who knows what I'll look like by the time the months tick by and I finally get off crutches. It's a lot harder getting around on crutches than I anticipated. It's a lot of upper body strength and even after 10 days or so of really moving around my upper body is toning up. Perhaps I'll look like the Hulk by the time this is over! The real test starts tomorrow. A flight to New York and then a week away for a friends wedding (17th), Pieter's birthday (20th) and then our wedding anniversary (21st). The good thing is I have dark sunglasses and can nap anywhere! My life is getting better everyday and your job is to not take those pins of yours for granted. Go for a run, a hike, bike ride, whatever you enjoy or even just go up a flight of stairs without hanging onto the railing with a death grip. Enjoy it! Cx