Week 26: SIX MONTHS

Today is Tuesday, May 10th, and I broke my leg exactly six months ago, on Tuesday, Nov 10th. I cannot believe that it has been a half a year.

While I’ve certainly created a long documentation of my progress, I thought it would be nice to sum up my milestones. Particularly for anyone reading who is wondering how long it takes to recover. So:

• Nov 10: broke my leg
• Nov 11: IM Nail surgery
• Nov 13: discharged from hospital
• One week: got rid of boot
• Nine days: took first steps without crutches
• Two weeks: down to one crutch
• Three weeks: off crutches, going down steps one at a time
• Four weeks: started PT
• Five weeks: walked a mile
• Six weeks: rode the spin bike, alternating feet going down stairs
• Seven weeks: going down stairs without handrails
• Eight weeks: can stand on one toe, started using leg press machine with bad leg
• Eleven weeks: can jump on two legs (landing with 80% of weight on my good leg)
• Sixteen weeks: stopped sleeping with my leg elevated
• Twenty-one weeks: ran about 40′ in running shoes
• Twenty-two weeks: ran on the treadmill for two minutes, went indoor top roping, very little pain, except after climbing. Last traces of limp are mostly gone.
• Twenty-four weeks: switched from spin bike to elliptical machine, went indoor bouldering
• Twenty-five weeks: ran 1 km on treadmill (10.5 min/mi pace), beginning to hop on one leg
• Twenty-six weeks: pain/difference in sensation between two legs while walking is completely gone. Can quasi run down stairs (if I’m in a rush) without pain and without using the handrail. Ran 1 mile in 10.5 minutes. Can side shuffle, do (some) jumping jacks, and run backwards. All of this is new this week. (Note that I can’t do these things at 100%)

Note that weeks 9 – 21 really sucked, both psychologically and physically. I knew that eventually I would get better, but…WHEN?!? Part of the problem was that I was expecting to be where I am now by 12-16 weeks (what my PT had told me). Clearly, this was just a very bad estimate. Which made things worse psychologically.

In any case, this week has been GREAT! On Sunday, I realized that my legs, for the first time, felt the same. I run with a limp, and my legs definitely don’t feel the same when I do that, but I’m pretty excited about having run a mile. It feels as though my leg realized that it had been six months and decided that enough was enough and it was finally going to be officially better. It is hard for me to say if any one thing made a difference. The only thing that I added last week was one set of 50 squats with a 17.5 kg bar on my shoulders (38.5 lbs). I hadn’t really be squatting since the squat bar always has a line at my gym, but this was done with a different weighted bar that no one uses.

Of course, I still have a ways to go. For example, I tried skipping last night and that is a real no go right now. I still have weakness underneath and to the inside of my knee, which I can feel when I do either the leg curl machine, or put one leg up on a Swiss ball — to the point where I don’t get the intended hamstring/glutes workout.

Also, I went bouldering this evening. It was better than last time, but there were still some moves that weren’t going to happen due to pain. And then there were moves that weren’t going to happen because of fear. I was really surprised how afraid I was this time. The gym I went to definitely had higher walls, bigger moves, and I wasn’t working entirely on overhang. There is no reason that I should be scared about falling. Structurally, my leg is A+. I think I am just afraid that I will do something else to something else, if that makes sense. It definitely really inhibited my climbing — I just wouldn’t do any big or not a 100% sure thing move, and strangely, I actually almost cried once. Not due to fear, but just because of overwhelming emotions or something like that, I think. In any case, my static climbing game, which I basically didn’t have before, is about to get a lot better.

Not sure if I’m going to have some pain tomorrow because of the climbing, and not sure how many times a week I’ll be able to climb when I return to my home gym, but fingers crossed that it’s 1. none, and 2. a lot.