Month: July 2018

7/12/18: 7-Month Checkup

I had my 7 month check-up with Dr. Price on Wednesday at MGH. Despite my April backpack stumble setback, my hamstring tendons are strong & attached, and the muscles at about 60% strength. Price said no restrictions on exercise, just let pain & my PT be my guides. I can try jogging and should continue with single-leg strength & balance in PT. I’ll see him for a final check at a year PO in December and then be released from his care. Woo-hoo, progress! 🎊🎉

(Meanwhile, south of my hamstrings, the knee pain & plantar fasciitis I battled before this injury have flared up with all my walking-for-stamina-building and demonstrating for clients, so I’ll be working with my PT to heal those weaknesses before I go off and do anything silly like jogging.)

The best part of my visit was meeting up with fellow Hamster Stephanie Tromblee in the waiting room, since our appointments were back to back. The power of this group is with me every day, but to have a real, live Hamster with me was affirming & moving. Stephanie said it was the first time she was able to laugh about the injury. I left with greater hope about my work future based on some things she said.

I think our mouths got moving so much our brains forgot to take a photo. Too much beauty for one frame, anyway. We didn’t want to blow your minds.

7/7/18: Second Half of Life

Den of Positivity, 7 mo PO:

A friend and fitness mentor sent me this podcast, thinking it might resonate with me. It did. David Jack echoes some of the same truths about the “second half of life” that Richard Rohr so beautifully names in his book, Falling Upward. Give it a listen on a commute or from your new Hamster recovery couch.

“There is no one exercise on the face of the earth that everybody has to do to be fit. None. None. Don’t ever feel trapped like that. And you don’t have to do it the way someone else does. *Move*. Move in a way that makes you feel better. Move in a way that doesn’t make you feel more pain that day or two days later, and then you gotta come into the gym, and roll for half an hour, and mob[ilize] for half an hour, and unlock, and dislocate, and arm bar, and all this, just so you can do an exercise..? Holy mackerel! What is your fitness doing to you, man?!

And then, leave some room for grace. Like, look back and go, holy cr*p, there is a force out there that really does and is willing to do good things for me, even when I don’t deserve it. And some of the best things in my life have come from places and times that I could have never planned…And even when I don’t deserve it. And if we can receive that, we can see some of that, and get some peace from some of that, here’s what’s more important: We can start to give that and extend that to others.”

Podcast.

Falling Upward.