For a long time, this felt like a week when nothing was changing. I didn’t feel like I was getting stronger, I didn’t feel like the pain was diminishing, and on top of that, I tripped three times and used my bad leg to catch my fall which…hurt. Not sure why I tripped so much this week.
Notable things:
- I walked 1.5 miles for the first time on Friday evening, and it was a slog, for sure. Took about 30 minutes.
- I have been going to the gym like a mad woman. Rode the spin by 4x in a row, followed by a day off, and then back on. Doing lots and lots of PT exercises as well.
- Did 20 squats holding a 20kg (44 lbs) kettle ball. Seems like this means I could move onto the bar soon? Going way below parallel.
- Walking almost normal pace when I hustle.
- Happened to find myself goofing around on a bouldering wall (don’t ask), campused up to a hold that put my feet about 4″ above the pad. Forgot that I couldn’t fall, and fell down onto the pad. It’s not like I couldn’t feel it, but I was totally fine, surprisingly.
- Part of my PT is one leg presses on the leg press machine. The differential between my two legs in terms of how much I can press is, uh, 100 lbs. Yikes!
Not sure what other notable things there were, but then, on Monday afternoon, suddenly I started walking with a lot less pain. I walked 1.5 miles again and felt fine. This morning I was back to ache-y, but then this afternoon it got better again. So that felt like some progress.
Also, this Sunday was my two month breakiversary. This made me 1. kind of check my expectations about recovery and 2. go back to my entry from my one month breakiversary and compare where I was.
First, I realized that initially I thought I was going to be in a cast for 6-8 weeks (initially, i.e. when I was laying on the mat with a floppy foot waiting for the paramedics to come). Sometimes I get frustrated that I’m not further along in recovery — particularly these days because the early recovery went so quickly and everyone was saying, “I can’t believe it’s been three weeks and you are off crutches,” etc. So the fact that going down stairs is still kind of hard, that balancing on my bad leg to put my pants/socks on in the morning is still hard, and the fact that I have very little lateral stability all make me feel like things aren’t progressing fast enough anymore. Like, as though I should be starting to run by now. Even though it’s been two months since my break.
But second, I did look back at my week 5 post, and realized how different things were that week from now. I remember how ridiculously slow that one mile walk to the grocery store was. Though it does still feel like progress is slowing down.
So: this week was kind of blah I guess. We shall see what next week brings, aside from flying half-way around the world.
I Broke My Leg Bouldering 