IT was literally insult to injury.

The story of how I gubbed my leg - "gubbing" being, I believe, the technical medical term - is really, really boring. There's nothing more injurious to a journalist than a boring story.

But here you are: I was walking out of a physio appointment for a calf tear to my left leg when wham – my right leg was suddenly sore. I appreciate the irony, yes.

I take a west-of-Scotland-male approach to my health: ignore the ailment and hope it gets better on its own. I cycled to work the next day and the day after that.

This was stupid, and it was particularly stupid because my left leg calf tear hasn't healed properly, despite nearly a year of physiotherapy, because I kept running on it even though it was agony.

I had a CT scan of my old left leg booked but as soon as I walked into the appointment the radiographer insisted on doing my right leg too. It turned out my right leg had a grade three tear - the worst kind - that was as severe as the original injury to my left leg.

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Basically, I was walking along, minding my own business and my calf muscle had just... exploded.

The physiotherapist was in the room during the scan and he and the radiographer quietly discussed the dimensions and severity of the tear, and how long it might be before I could return to running.

The kicker here, you see, was that I was just on the cusp of being cleared to return to running when this fresh gubbing happened. I wrote last year about how join my friend's running club had been life changing and finally revealed to me why people have such a passion for running. 

I had completed my first 10k, to my own great surprise, and then suddenly was limited to a walking pace for a year. I had only just returned to my ballet classes, my passion.

I was desperate to get up to speed again and the thought of being restricted for another six months was devastating.

People, though, were incredibly kind. The leg was excruciating and I couldn't weight bear. My friend Denise's dad clambered up the loft and brought me down crutches. As I experimented with them, a chap jogged past and smirked at me. "You may laugh," I scowled after him. "But I was you once... and now look."

The barista in my local coffee shop, Short Long Black, loaned me a set of crutches too, which is above and beyond. Friends brought food and neighbours brought coffee, cake and supplies. Stacey, the owner of the F45 gym I attend in Glasgow's west end, has been astonishingly kind and supportive. I was incredibly well cared for. 

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The ladies I cat sit for - now dear friends - came to my rescue with home cooked meals. They also took one look at my grossly swollen and discoloured leg and, thankfully, ordered me to hospital. Good thing too as, after an intense 30 hours awake, upright and without painkillers in the Queen Elizabeth, it turned out I also had deep vein thrombosis.

I asked the nurse practitioner when I might return to running and ballet. I knew six months for the calf tear but wondered how the blood clots might affect it.

"We have to acknowledge," he said to me, "That you are past your prime." Jeez. Kick a girl when she's down. He said I would never return to running or to dance.

"I'm not ready to hear that," I said, thinking of my 30 years of ballet classes, and finally, embarrassingly, began to cry.

Until last month I was cycling every day, walking at least 10,000 steps daily, doing four F45 HIIT sessions a week, and partially returned to my Scottish Ballet classes. I felt stronger, fitter and happier than I ever have and had even become the kind of woman who went to the gym while on holiday. 

It sounds obvious unless it's a new concept to you, which for me it was, but exercise was as much about mental space as physical wellbeing, a vital form of active rest. After four weeks of limping and struggling, I'm not sure how to tolerate another slow recovery.

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I read recently that sports-related injuries trigger grief: you lose an important part of your life and have to learn to live with the absence of a passion. There was a time I would have thought that was nonsense but now I have two wonky legs and lumpy blood. I get it.

Past my prime, though? Absolutely not. Merely looking for a replacement passion to make me feel new again.