The one about Terry

Tom Daley 'Man of the Year' great night at the Attitude awards seeing Tom win his Man of the Year award. Met some nice celebrities, had an incredible 3 course meal and listened to Tom make his winning speech.

Myself and Tonia with Austria's
Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst

Me an Tom after with his Attitude award

But not all is glam in elite level sport. I have been struggling with a shin injury for over a year now, I wouldn't really call it an injury, more of an inconvenience in form of an Osteoid Osteoma, basically a really inconvenient lump in my shin bone. I didn't do anything, it just appeared. Unable to do any plyometric work without pain including two of my dives for over a year takes a lot of resilience.

The team named it Terry, Terry was operated on in May in London this year, in between the World Series and World Cup in China. I had an general anaesthetic during the procedure where a small circumference needle was injected into the point where Terry was and through the use of a CT scanner he was burnt away.

All excited to get back to training with Tonia and to jump without pain with just a week off I felt confident I could train properly and bounce around like everyone else. Two weeks later Terry seemed to pop back up again, I was gutted but confirmed with an MRI scan that it was swelling and hopefully he would go with time. Phew. The World Cup, Commonwealth Games and European Championships came and went, still with pain and limited training, Terry still hadn't gone. I thought I did pretty well considering! The medical team managed the pain with all sorts; ice, different pain killers, gels, anaesthetic patches, fortunately during competitions, probably because of the adrenaline, I didn't feel too much pain.

I had a month off after the European Championships, went back to training pain free . . . Yay, Terry had gone! There was no sign of a lump. A couple of weeks later, my gosh, Terry was back with a vengeance!

A CT scan was done this week, results confirmed the first operation was not successful in getting rid of all of Terry, a second procedure would have to be done to hopefully be pain free.

It is amazing and very lucky to have such a great medical support team here in Plymouth and with my coach Andy being very much on it, quick scans and quick results happened in order for me to have a second procedure done hopefully next week, again with just a weeks recovery. Spud (massage) Tim (physio) and Ben (weights) are always teaming up together to work something out. Thanks guys!

An insight into the ups and downs on injury, trying to train and compete through pain in order not to miss an important competition or not to be left behind by your rivals. Terry is just part of a light humour of taking away the pain of injury, i haven't gone crazy ;)

SB x