Category: Hamstring Recovery

9/25/18: Glennon Doyle Melton

Den of Positivity, 9.5 mo PO:

When I first heard Glennon Doyle Melton speak a few years ago, I couldn’t believe her tiny voice was the same one that boomed out of the narratives I’d been reading in her blog, Momastery. Don’t let the little voice fool you – this one’s a powerhouse of transformation & wisdom. And such a good writer.

Glennon’s words here echo many of the same truths about rising strong from failure that Brené Brown’s research & data do in her book, Rising Strong.

Again and again, I get the same message in my recovery from this injury and what has at times felt like a botched career change from public school teacher to personal trainer – “It’s really all we have to do. We have to sit through those uncomfortable feelings and let God work, and not numb or run. …If we can just let life be hard, and not numb it, and not run from it, and not deflect our pain onto somebody else… if we can just be still with it – we are transformed. Be still.”

9/25/18: Girls Gone Strong

I love this article from Girls Gone Strong as it reminds us that hamstring “tightness” can result from a number of imbalances & weaknesses in the abdomen, lower back, & pelvic floor. Most of us are not women who‘ve just given birth, but those of us who’ve born children may have instabilities that were never properly healed/addressed, and men can have similar pelvic dysfunction from postural distortions. Might be a good article to pass on to your PT.

9/20/18: ADHD & Chronic Pain

One of the remarkable things about the stimulant medication I take for my ADHD is that **it almost always lessened my post surgical pain**. This podcast offers a golden nugget about the association between chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and ADHD in women. It starts at 46 minutes in. (If you decide to watch the whole thing, start at 13 minutes in. The intro will kill you with boredom – especially if you have ADHD.)

“…If you have undiagnosed ADHD, you’re living in a state of chronic stress. We find that women end up with chronic stress disorders, fibromyalgia being the most common one. So, many women with ADHD have fibromyalgia, chronic pain syndrome, chronic fatigue… as a result of living in a chronically stressed state. So we see an association. Treatment – stimulant [medicine] treatment – of ADHD not only treats their ADHD symptoms, they also treat the fibromyalgia pain, and many women tell me that they can tell when their stimulant is wearing off because their pain returns.”

-Part 1: ADHD in Girls and Women with Dr. Patricia Quinn

9/14/18: Reach the Beach

Den of Positivity, 9 mo. PO:

I have two friends running the Reebok Ragnar Reach the Beach this weekend in New Hampshire: “A team of 12 friends (or 6) piles into two vans and runs and runs, relay style, for 201.8 miles from Bretton Woods to Hampton Beach, day and night and day again, until each runner completes three legs, accomplishing together what they could never do alone.” It sounds like one of the coolest, most satisfying things you could do with a bunch of friends, and I think mine are rock stars. I’m wishing them lots of love, dry feet, and the stamina of a twenty-one-year-old.

Every time I talk to one of them about the race I walk away humming The Fixx’s 1983 song “Reach the Beach” that I listened to relentlessly on my Walkman during the winter of 6th grade. One of my Ragnar friends will at least remember “One Thing Leads to Another” from that album; the other was in Kindergarten at the time, the same age her daughter is now, but big brother or Dad may have planted some of their songs in her head. I’m sure she was moving to music well before grade school.

At 9 months out from surgery, I am *every* *day* looking for that beach on my horizon. I float closer to the shore, get washed out again by setbacks, Hamster Howl my panic, rage, and despair about sustaining a temporarily debilitating injury only one year after making a career change that depends on physical ability…with two active children…

…and eventually, make progress, moving back towards shore. Healing happens – in large part because I’ve accomplished together with my family, caregivers, coworkers, and the hundreds of beautiful souls I’ve met on the Proximal Hamstring Repair Facebook page, that which I could never have done alone.

I’ll reach my beach. The tides may have changed it by the time I get there – a new normal – but I would not trade the lessons I’ve learned for my original hamstring attachments. I would not. Stay tuned for the one-woman show that details being facedown in the arena, rumbling with my darkest truths, and rising strong again. You know it’ll be funny.

Reach the Beach

“Passing time has no surprise
When pleasure found is my resource
Should I lose my lover's eyes
Then destiny will plot my course

Forgotten lies aim to distract me
This mono mind must not connect
Purer nature will contain me
Free fall in air I will surpass
When I'm falling, calling, I return
Floating closer to your shore

I start to drift with the tide
Maybe I'll reach, I'll reach the beach
My heart is sealed watertight
Maybe I'll reach. I'll reach the beach

When in your eyes I see the sign
A teasing passion for a desperate man
Should I lose my lover's eyes
Then secrecy will plot my course
When I'm feeling too sure, then I drown
Floating closer to your shore

I start to drift with the tide
Maybe I'll reach, I'll reach the beach
My heart is sealed watertight
Maybe I'll reach, I'll reach the beach”

9/11/18: 9 Months P.O.

9 mo PO I’m standing in line at the ice cream stand with my daughter tonight. The teenager waiting on my line is the slowest scooper ever to scoop ice cream in the history of all scooping, and while we’re waiting, the mosquitos are starting to gather around our ankles, except I can’t feel the first few bites because they’ve landed on my surgical side calf, right where it’s still a little numb. Ms. Bloodsucker had herself a couple scoops of Hamster blood tonight. Upside: I can’t feel any itching yet, either.