I am in a good mood regarding my leg these days. Yeah, I still have pain. But it is only at the one location (same as last week), it feels better than last week for sure, and no, I do not have a stress fracture. (Eh, 93% confident about that.) No pain at all going up stairs anymore.
In any case, guess what I did this week? On Monday to be precise. I RAN! Okay, I ran two ~40′ lengths at the gym. And more like “ran.” I definitely limp while I do it, but I did it! And in moderation so that I don’t wind up with even *more* pain.
Also, I am getting stronger, and all of my new exercises are becoming easy. Almost too easy. Need to think of new things to do, which is actually not the easiest thing in the world. But that is good. Leg press report: 47.5 kg on bad leg, 67.5 kg on good leg. Realizing that it’s probably going to take a year or so to get the bad leg up to speed with the good leg.
Which brings me to this week’s title. Honestly, I don’t know what my PT was thinking when he said 12-16 weeks to be walking without pain and without a limp. My friend who did the same thing, on November 1 many years in the past (I am November 10, Nov 11 for surgery), said that it took her until April to be able to walk without pain. Maybe he didn’t know that I had a compound fracture? Anyway, it has helped mentally to just throw that out the window.
Also, I got a nice psychological boost tonight when I talked to a trainer at my gym, and he was like, “you have a broken leg!?!?! That explains why you do weird exercises, but wow, I can’t believe how much you work on it and how dedicated you are!” I also told him about no cast, crutches for three weeks and he was like, “you are a very inspirational person,” which is a bit overboard — frankly, I’m more enamored with my surgeon than anyone else — but it was nice to hear. Even if he didn’t really understand the whole rod = load bearing from the get go.
I am definitely getting close to being able to climb, though I am waiting until I have no pain walking just because I’d hate to mess things up right now. I’m curious to see what it will be like when I get back to it. Clearly I’ll need to build some callouses and some grip strength, but I feel pretty strong, and my abs are sick. Provided I don’t let my weight go through the roof, I bet I’m okay. I’m climbing all over the gym equipment these days (with my favorite thing now being dynoing up to the pull up bar), and it feels like my technique is still there. Very curious how I will do on “balance”/slab problems, since my balance definitely isn’t the same on the bad side yet. It is STILL harder to put my pants on standing on my bad foot than my good foot.
Oh right, I bounced on a mini-tramp a few times this week, thinking that that might tell me what landing on a bouldering mat would feel like (indoors!), but it turned out that mostly it was just hard to jump, and it didn’t really simulate landing very well.
I felt like I also had some general life advice for other people in my situation, but I’m forgetting it. Maybe something about be prepared to feel like you are plateauing/have much slower progress as you get away from the initial break. IDK, if it was something more important, I’ll post it next week.
I Broke My Leg Bouldering 