Weeks 6–7: Back to Melbourne and Back to Reality

After Mont Blanc, hitchhiking across Europe, and an extremely unplanned weekend in Amsterdam, I expected the trip back to Melbourne to be the calm part.

It was not.

My flight from Shanghai was delayed, I had to wait for a replacement flight around midnight, and after finally landing in Melbourne, I got stuck in customs long enough to miss my meeting with Dr. Zengin. After several weeks of mountains, glaciers, and questionable transportation decisions, Australian customs somehow required the most patience.

Once I escaped the airport, I returned to Monash, Noble Park exercise sessions, the gym, and something resembling a normal routine. My first workout back was humbling. I had lost around eight kilograms during the trip, and while much of it was water and glycogen, the dumbbells did not care about that explanation.

Research-wise, I rebuilt the medication-burden analysis using 296 completed STRONG-MS responses. I also had to recalculate physical activity scores from the raw IPAQ questions because several “cleaned” variables were completely blank. Very thoughtful of the spreadsheet.

The findings were not what I expected. Medication burden was not clearly associated with lower physical activity or more sitting. However, people with a higher burden tended to have greater disability, more falls, and more previous fractures. It was my first real lesson that research does not owe you a satisfying result just because your hypothesis sounded good.