It took 3 days for my compression socks to get here. They arrived on Thursday so I put them on straight away to see how they felt and to get used to them walking around the house. They were fine, no discomfort and they weren’t as restrictive as I thought they might be even though I had measured my legs and ordered the right size.

I didn’t go out for a walk or do any exercise on Thursday as my friend said I should let my body get used to them and that I should go out on Friday – which I did, I thought it was about time to start taking the advice I was offered. I had no reaction, no stinging or anything like that so Saturday I did the same and went for a walk again and got the same thing which was no reaction, and when I took them off before bed there was no visible increase in the number of veins or the colour, so I was happy enough – it was looking like they were going to work.

And today is Sunday and my first day back on the bike. I was looking forward to it and decided I’d do 3 minutes to see how it was, and I’m happy that so far it seems to be fine. It looks like I have no reaction, it’s just like it was before the vein thing began. I’ll do 3 minutes later on and hope for the same and when I take the socks off, I hope I’ll see no change.

As I said before in a previous post, after exercise I invert my leg to help blood flow returning back up my leg. So, how I do this is I lie on my back quite close to a wall and then swing around so that my leg goes up the wall. I do this for about 10 minutes which is ok, but it is a bit boring to be honest. So, what I do is listen to an app on my phone which is called Read It For Me. I think it’s really good, what he does is he takes out the key points in a book and summarises it and reads it to you in 10-12 minutes, he also makes a video to go with it if you want to watch that too. The link is here if you want to take a look, it’s $9 a month and for me it’s worth it because it’s a very positive boost to start my day with. He does different types of books as well such as personal development and sales and brings out new books every week too, so I quite look forward to lying down with my leg up the wall now.

So, now its Monday morning and I’m checking the leg and I’m not sure if there is any change, I’m looking at it but you know sometimes when you look at something you can see things that aren’t really there, well I’m not sure if this is one of those times. I’ve taken pictures of my leg since this started so I’ll compare todays pictures but they’re not always definitive, different light conditions make different pictures and I’m not a photographer – so what I’m going to do is to be positive and stay exercising on the bike and have faith that my compression socks are working.

I’m going to slightly increase the time each day this week and get back to doing what I was doing before this began, which is improve my breathing and be less than 18 stone.