5 weeks post-injury, 4 weeks post-surgery…
I still spend an inordinate amount of time sitting on the couch, occasionally crutching back and forth the first floor to the kitchen for food, or to the bathroom. This one floor of our house has been my world for the past month. I sleep in our back room because it’s closest to the bathroom easiest for me to maneuver and without any little kitty cats ready to trip me in the dead of night. I sleep alone on the couch with cushions and pillows to prop up my ankle above my heart, so the swelling gradually goes down as the night progresses the same as it increases throughout the day. Small paper cups filled with pills on the floor next to me. My phone alarm set for every four hours to take something to keep pain and discomfort at bay. A tiny bottle of lavender essential oil for my daily “bath.” A journal and pen to write down things I’m thankful for at the end of every day. A book, if I was inclined to read before falling asleep the night before. TV and Fire Stick remotes. A basket of my clothes so I can pick out what I want to wear, and Brian doesn’t have to help me color coordinate the day’s t-shirt and pants which is likely the same thing as I wore the day before, but clean. This all because I’m afraid of going up and down our stairs. I’m afraid to fall, so I’m not even going to take the chance.
But there are also small changes that mean that healing is taking place. Things aren’t static, thank God. I ventured out of the house three different times last week! Now that I have a boot, I can wear different pants, which is one reason for leaving the house. The other is, I’m working on my endurance for not having my foot propped up all the time. It turns tingly and purple when I’m vertical too long. I went to my first post-op appointment. I went to the climbing gym with Brian and Oren so I could watch them climb, even if I can’t and don’t want to yet myself. I was out all day on Sunday to church and various other things. We got home at 3:00 pm, and I crashed for two hours. So these small adventures are still a lot for me, which is slightly depressing. I’m used to being super active almost every day of the week, and now having a normal, somewhat low-key Sunday is exhausting me? How quickly have I reached this reduced level of energy! And how long will it take to return to what I consider normal? How much of this is age and the hormonal ebb and flow? How much is just the slowdown needed for healing.
(Side note: I did confirm with the surgeon that this was not an old-lady injury, but rather common among certain kinds of athletes. My ego was soothed.)
Whatever the reason, likely all of the above, I’ve been following my body’s queues. Rest and movement, each when it feels called for. My new bedroom is also where I “workout.” And by workout, I mean that, as soon as I could get down and back up off of the floor on my own safely, I have been spending 20-30 minutes once or twice a day stretching. One of my legs is being over-used in a weird way, and the other one is being under-used in a different weird way. Both knees and hips are feeling jacked, and the last thing I need to do is injure something else.
Since most of the time I’m in a semi-fetal position, nothing feels better than laying flat on my back to stretch the entire length of my body from toes to fingertips, then lifting each leg to stretch my hamstrings. I also do occasional short core workouts. And when I get up to crutch my way past the kitchen to the back room, some days I’ll stop at the bar we have in our pantry doorway to do a few pull-ups, and on my way to sit back down, throw in some leg lifts and hip mobility with my immobile leg. Then I use our portable fingerboard, the Tension Climbing Flash Board, looped around my good foot to do “no hangs.” Weird, I know, but normal for climbers. It’s all sort of haphazard and occasional, no rhyme or reason, whenever the spirit moves me at the moment. My inner control freak is eager to make working out a bit more regular soon. Especially since I’m reducing all my pain meds.
Once I was past the acute post-surgery pain, I have mostly been taking ibuprofen and Tylenol with the occasional stronger medication at night to sleep. As I take less and less, I’m feeling more and more aches in my whole body, and I know it’s from being sedentary and stuck in weird positions all the time. Or, again, age. My shoulders. My back. My neck. My collar bones? I’m ready to spend more time moving around, and while I’m still non-weight-bearing, that means whatever I can do on the floor in my back room. More core, more stretching, more pull ups. I’m looking forward to physical therapy. I have been stretching my ankle every day, and it’s getting less and less stiff, which I was pretty dubious would ever loosen up. When the surgeon flexed my foot right out of the splint last week, I thought my Achilles was going to snap. But he was just showing me how painful the healing process was going to be so that I wouldn’t be alarmed by it. Now, I can’t wait to start putting weight on it in a couple of weeks however much it will hurt.
I’m most eager for the return of my calf muscle. It’s disturbing to look down at my leg and not recognize it as my own. It looks nothing like my other, “good” leg anymore. And it has begun to shed its skin, to molt, like it’s becoming something new. Sheets of skin have begun falling off of it. And that’s nothing to what is happening around the surgical incision. That’s its own mess. I’m trying to love it anyway. Our healing bodies can look ugly, but the process is nonetheless miraculous. Sometimes when I’m laying still at night, it seems like I can feel my bones knitting themselves back together again. Or tendons, ligaments. Nerves. It feels like fire, or electricity, flaring up my shin.
~*~
Besides all the physical stuff catalogued above, I’m still working and writing at home. I’m fortunate that I have the ability to continue to work at home as I am able. One piece I wrote anew this past year just came out in the spring issue of Halfway Down the Stairs, an online lit journal. It looks so good in print! And I really like the picture they included. This essay is not about climbing, but a moment in time as I figure out what mothering an adult kid means. So, the broad theme is parenting, but I don’t think you have to be a mother or even a parent to read it. Anyone who has had a mother or a mother figure in their lives could get something out of it. Or, anyone who has ever been a young adult leaving the nest could, too.
Oh, just read it, whoever you are; it’s not very long! And it’s free! Five minutes of your time is all it costs.
