Fear and Loathing in Las Scotia Sea

1pm Monday 8th April

So today I took loads of drugs and whiteyed on shift.

But my dear reader before you jump to any wild assumptions about what I have been getting up to please allow me to tell you the full story...

The past wee while I have been struggling with nasty back pain. My back has always been pretty rubbish and (surprisingly) I am not particularly accustomed to the heavy lifting I need to do here. My back had been getting steadily more painful as time went on and a trapped nerve in my back was giving me sharp bursts of pain and shifting patches of numbness and pins and needles. Not cool. At the end of shift I would spend about 20 mins doing yoga/pilates stretches to try and loosen things up. But after a few days I realised that ibuprofen and yoga just wasn't working and I spoke to John the ships doctor about it. He kept me on ibuprofen but also gave me some Co-Dydramol. Alas after a week it was clear that this too was not working. Yesterday I could barely stand upright and nearly had a disaster with the liquid nitrogen as my back spasmed at just the wrong moment. I resorted to strapping my hot water bottle to my back for the rest of my shift. So at the end of my shift I went to speak to John again and he put me Tramadol 4 times a day and Diazipam before bed. Quite honestly I felt amazing! I woke up today full of beans and feeling pretty damn good about life. I still had a bit of a painful back but my movement was much freer and I was less drained by the pain. I was flying! But at around 10am my blood pressure plummeted and I got all dizzy, sick and faint. And spent most of the rest of the day in bed feeling horrendous. I am sure there is a moral to the story here but I am still too hopped up on meds to know what it is....

5pm Wednesday 10th April

Still on the Tramadol. I tried without then I tried other meds but Tramadol is really the only one that takes the edge off enough that I can work. I am still in quite a bit of pain so I am very careful with how I work and fingers crossed I won't make it any worse.

We are heading north towards South Georgia on a long line of CTDs (We are going to have a day at King Edward Point on Friday! EXTREMELY excited!) we are a little backlogged with samples but things have been running fairly smoothly. I have even managed to do a little extra-curricular work (matlab – yuck)! However I have still only ready half of one of the 20 papers I brought to read in my imagined 'free-time'.

We are no longer in ice floes and I do miss the shifting landscape and dynamic wildlife. However we are now in Big Berg country. Each day brings a new spectacle of icy islands and floating fortresses. The sheer size of some of them is staggering, and the diversity of form and colour is captivating. A few days ago Gwen went up to Monkey Island just after breakfast and counted 48 huge icebergs surrounding the ship. This morning there was an enormous slab off the back of the ship. It was far away but still took up 15% of the horizon. It had huge cave systems carved into the cliff walls and a microclimate overhead. Just above it sat this long thin white cloud which was striking against the charcoal sky.

This evening the sun set over an ice palace with towering turrets and shining spires. The sky was a glowing dusky pink painted with wispy swirls of cloud. After a long and tiring shift taking the time to watch the sunset has a wonderfully rejuvenating effect.

Well folks. Apologies for being remiss in my blog duties. I have been too knocked out with pain (and drugs) by the end of shift to focus on writing to you. Will you forgive me?

Peace x x x x x