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.

Week 7: Eh, but No Hands

Short post this week because I really don’t have much to say. Here are some things:

• I’ve ditched stair handrails entirely, including going down. Pretty sure this was one of my goals last week. Got way faster and better at going down stairs.
• My fracture site is warm to the touch. I was a bit worried about this, but I asked my PT and he said warm = healing. So, good!
• Continued to ride the spin bike, and did the elliptical once. Oops. I did it for 40 minutes and it turned out to be too much. I paid for it the next day, and my PT surmised that I probably did a bit of muscle damage that slowed the healing down a bit. No more of that for a while!
• Tried to go bowling with my family for Christmas. Guess what activity is terrible with a broken leg? I did the regular technique for a while and then wound up bowling standing holding the ball between my legs. I did really well with the latter technique I must say. I didn’t think bowling would be a problem, but now I totally see why it is hard: there is a lot of weight transfer, deceleration, balance, etc.
• Got a replacement pair of Solutions (climbing shoes) for Christmas! Downsized a half size, and switched to the women’s model, hopefully they will be really solid for heel hooks now.
• Asked my PT when I’ll know that I’m ready to climb and to ride a bike. Answer: when I have no pain walking/can walk without a limp, and for climbing, when I can jump and land no problem. Which seems like it will coincide with feeling 100%. My guess is the beginning of March? Kind of don’t think I’ll be able to top rope before I leave on January 16.
• Cleared to use the leg press with very little weight — up to 75% bodyweight with two legs, up to 30% bodyweight with just the bad leg.
• Wow my calf muscles on my bad leg are small.
• Kind of tired of this thing.
• Goal for next week: not sure if this is within reason, but be able to stand up on one toe? It’s kind of the only thing I have left. Maybe try the elliptical again?

I think that is about it.

Week 6: Balance and Mobility

I’m learning to measure progress in new ways. As I said at some point, since I’m not sending (finishing) anything in the climbing gym, I have to find other ways to get my dopamine going. Without further ado:

Things that happened this week:

I’ve started going down stairs alternating feet, holding onto a handrail. This has actually gotten significantly better over the course of the week — shallow stairs actually don’t feel that bad, and I’m pretty fast. The limiting factor on this — and it seems like on everything else — is ankle mobility.

As of Sunday: I can put my pants on! That is, I can get my good leg into my pants leg while standing/balancing on my bad foot. It still feels scary, but I’m doing it consistently. I’m doing a lot of balance work in general — still doing 2 minutes 3x/day — but also trying to figure out what kind of dynamic balance stuff — i.e. balancing with the rest of me moving — I can add in. Did this (picture on the right)!

Riding the spin bike for 40 minutes. Actually sweated a lot for the first time since November 9. Considering trying the elliptical too.

Slightly overdid it trying to work on my calf strength so that I could go up on one toe. This caused extra swelling around my fracture site. Backed off, swelling went down to lowest levels yet.

Getting very close to being able to fully lock my knee.

I wore heels! Not for very long, but I did it. (special occasion)

As of today, my bodyweight squats feel totally normal/even on both sides. I can easily go below parallel.

Other things:

Now that the swelling around my fracture site has gone way down, I can feel the callus formation around my bone, which is cool, because callus = bone healing. Here’s a handy diagram of the stages of bone healing. I am somewhere between phase two and three, the latter of which occurs around weeks 6-8, or 8-10, depending on what website you get your information from. Once the bony callus is fully formed, your bone is technically back together, but complete bone remodeling is finished after a year.

Upcoming goals:

I crossed off two of my goals from last week, and I’m carrying one over. So, updated goals are:

• Be able to stand up on just my left toe.
• Going down stairs without a handrail.
• Ride a bike outside

Believe it or not I feel like riding a bike outside might not be that far off!

Pictures:

This week (left) versus last week (right). Not too much difference.

This week (left) versus last week (right). Pretty significant difference. Really pleased with this.