Week 15: No Pain = Gain!

Guys! Something amazing happened this week. In that on Sunday, I was walking around and I was like, wait a second, I don’t think I’m having pain while walking?

I’ve had pain for so long that I wasn’t 100% certain even, but if I had any pain, I’d say that 97% of it was gone. And it felt like a pretty dramatic improvement from the day before.

Unfortunately, this led to me doing 40 minutes on the elliptical twice in a row, which I guess was too much, and now I have some pain again in the bottom part of my leg. But the more annoying pain, which is on the inside of my leg underneath my knee, just above my incision site, is gone.

I think though that if I take a day off of cardio, and switch back to the spin bike, the pain will be for real gone by next week?

I do have to admit that the absence of pain comes with me kind of giving into my now very minor limp, and it might be another week or two before both are gone. But it is pretty exciting.

Other things: I am getting pretty tired of going to the gym to do my PT exercises, but I do it. No wait, actually, I think I skipped two days last week — W and Th. But for busy-ness reasons. Maybe why the pain went away?

Sad to say that my leg press weight is still the same on both legs — 37.5 kg on the bad leg, 65 kg on the good leg. But walking on my toes doesn’t hurt anymore at all and is really easy. I’ve started a new balance exercise which involves throwing a medicine ball at a mini-trampoline to one side or the other of me — and catching it on the rebound standing on one leg — to work on my lateral stability. Oh, I jumped up with my hands in the air. You know, like jumping for joy. Which was indeed quite joyous!

Finally, here is a picture of the callus at my fracture site, that *kind of* captures how huge it is.

Fingers crossed for next week!

Week 13: Yet Another Week

Well, here we are at week 13. Tomorrow — February 10 — at 9:20 pm EST not to get specific or anything, will be my three month breakiversary. I basically have the same thing to say as last week. Things are getting better, but slowly, and the only way I can really measure progress is by my exercises at the gym.

Though I will say that I had a moment on Friday when the thing felt great and I wondered if I was in fact walking without a limp at all (in sturdy sandals), and then Sunday night I walked around a fair amount and it felt pretty good as well, though it might have been that I was distracted. Not sure. Walking around the gym in running shoes without a limp about 70% of the time, though still not at full speed and still with my upper body pretty rigid.

I also can say that there is definitely a pattern in which it is stiff in the morning, and feels better as the day passes and as the blood starts flowing to it.

Today I maybe made a mistake, however, in deciding to try an actual spin class. Which I only did because I wanted to ride the spin bike and unbeknownst to me, the spin studio was occupied. I told the instructor beforehand about my leg, and that I might have to do something different, or maybe even leave the class early. Well, it turns out that one thing that I cannot do for sure is low resistance, high velocity, hovering above the seat spinning. It’s just way too much impact. I’m okay with being off the seat, but I need a lot of resistance to slow me down and take away any actual impact. In any case, I did actually leave the class, which was slightly psychologically deflating.

I do wonder if it delayed my progress a bit — because I pushed through for a few minutes after realizing that the pain wasn’t going to go away like it usually does when I ride the bike. This also made me wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be riding the bike 5x/wk. Or rather, if that is slowing down my recovery, even though it doesn’t hurt while I’m doing it. So I’m thinking of trying an experiment, which is that I’ll ride maybe twice this week, and see how it goes. Of course it’s not like I have a control experiment against which to judge my progress, but I’m going to try anyway.

I think I mentioned last week that I’ve been climbing on this jungle gym piece of equipment that they have at the gym, climbing style. I’ve tried some high steps with my bad leg, and, at least in sneakers, and with something good to hold onto, everything feels fine. I’m thinking that I would be good to top rope at this point, and am seriously considering buying a 10 pack of visits to the only climbing gym here that has autobelays. (Though I need to check out how many routes they have on autobelay — if it is just one station, I might not go for the 10 pack.) Missing my regular gym and climbing people.

I guess the only other thing to say is that I’m up to 35kg (77lbs) on the leg press with my bad leg at the gym, which is 10 kg or 22lbs more than last week. Progress. I’m also doing better on my really difficult balance exercises, and upped my weight from 4kg (8.8lbs) to 5kg (11 lbs) on my single leg deadlifts. My bosu ball lunges are getting too easy on one side, and oh, I can jump my feet apart and back together again jumping jack style, though not in the single motion that you do when you are actually doing jumping jacks. Ugh…it is not fun to think about the fact that being able to do something as simple as a jumping jack is something I aspire to/will be a big moment. Rising up on one toe has also gotten significantly easier.

Well, that is about it for this week. I think that last week I said something about, “if it doesn’t happen this week, I just need to accept that and keep going.” Same goes for this week — though! I have to say that I do hope that maybe I could have some kind of breakthrough this week? 🙂 Though really I really need to think about just being grateful that everything is healing correctly. Things could be way worse.

Week 10: Not so blah at all

It feels like forever since I last updated about my leg, but that is probably because I travelled for 38 hrs and moved halfway around the world. BUT, not before lots of exciting leg things happened!

First, I saw my doctor on Wednesday. He took another set of X-rays, which I would post a picture of except that they are on a CD and my laptop can’t read a CD. I was kind of nervous about the X-rays, because while I can do all the PT in the world, I can’t control how well my bone comes together. The good news: it is coming together swimmingly. To quote my doctor, “actually, you have much more bone growth than we’d expect in an adult at this stage.” Which probably does have to do with being so active with it.

The doctor also recommended that I start standing up on the spin bike, and start ellipticalling, though “at an easy pace.” I tried to elliptical on Wednesday, but if you know me, you know that I am not going to do things, “at an easy pace,” so I hopped off and rode the bike because I could feel some pain. Standing up on the bike is kind of cool — at first I was terrible at it, but it got much better and easier each time I did it.

In PT, my therapist showed me a lot of progressions that I can do now that I am going to stop going (too expensive to go where I am now). I also waked on my toes, which is exciting since the last time I tried that, I collapsed immediately. He also had me do a one legged deadlift with a 10 lb kettleball, which was nearly impossible, even with terrible form. But not totally impossible. 🙂 All of this was a big boost psychologically, and my leg definitely hurts less. My balance is also getting better — which I judge by how easy it is to get into my pants in the morning. Pants are still hard, but I don’t even notice my leg putting on my underwear. (TMI? Sorry) I can also feel my quad on my bad leg recovering fro the total mush state it was in.

Then I moved, and spent 18 hrs on a plane and 38 in transit. I did my PT during my unforeseen layover when I got put up in a hotel, but have been slacking — I will admit — on it since. I also did some jumping at the hotel, though I was definitely  favoring my good leg on the landing. Despite slacking on PT, I probably about three miles in total yesterday? And it still feels better everyday. But today I am joining a gym so that I can get back on the spin bike, and then the elliptical, and then the treadmill! (Not to mention so that I can save/rebuild my remaining upper body strength.) 

The only picture I have for you this week is one of my lovely flesh colored compression sock that I bought because you can’t really wear a black one in the tropics/with a bare other leg. It is so attractive, I know!

i forget what I predicted before — that I could start climbing by the beginning of March? Or was it the beginning of February? Beginning of March seems really reasonable right now.

Goals:

• start to elliptical
• lose my limp
• do all of my PT exercises

 

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.