Category: Hamstring Recovery

8/9/18: 8 Months P.O.

8 mo. PO this week. This month I added hills to my stamina-building walks, and suddenly feel gimpy-limpy again on those ascents. Makes me realize how normal my gait has felt for weeks on the flats.

Today in PT Melissa had me run for 20 yards down a hallway and said my gait looked great – no limp and no favoring the non-surgical side. My single-leg calf raises are steady and calves are looking strong. Woo-hoo!! I was terrified the whole time, thank you very much. Next time I’ll be able to relax more.

Any day I do too much demonstrating at work training clients (squats, deadlifts, lunges with just body weight) brings on muscle belly pain a day or two later that is deep & achy and reminds me of the pit of despair from weeks 1-13 PO, but it passes within 24 hours.

Every Sunday I look ahead at my coming week and think about how to judiciously spend what’s in my “energy bucket.” Am I training Mon & Tues morning? Probably shouldn’t do PT exercises or take my walk those days. Swimming with the kids every afternoon? Probably shouldn’t do laps or wear flippers on the days I worked in the morning or did exercises. Just sit in the water & cool off & breathe. (Challenging, since my two kids are shot out of cannons every morning, and there’s a kid in me who was once the same.)

My recovery is progressing. Could it progress faster without a highly physical job & kids? Yep. But that would be someone else’s life, and I am working hard at loving what is.

7/31/18: Bad Etiquette?

Is it gag-me-with-a-spoon icky to offer a pre-surgical Hamster my right side cut out raised toilet seat that I bought on Amazon? Bad etiquette? It’s clean & disinfected… I can offer it to my PT for her hip surgery patients, but I’m happy to ship it to a Hamster if you pay for the shipping, however that might work. I don’t know the logistics, but blahblahblah, and we’ll figure it out. I live in Massachusetts, USA.

7/25/18: The Moon

Den of Positivity, 7.5 mo PO: From a friend’s post about the moon last night: “PEOPLE. I just saw the moon in my new telescope. And I mean in crystal clear precision, so big it didn’t fit in the lens, I had to pan to see all of it, and CRYSTAL CLEAR. Like the pictures you see in books of close-ups of the moon. Craters, ridges of craters in stark relief, valleys, those shocking white spots and lines that look like meridians radiating out from craters – or maybe it was one of the moon’s poles?? How the hell do I know!! And a crystal clear Sea of Tranquility. I could see textures, people, and colors – well, ok, black and white and grey, not exactly colors but MOON colors, and they were stunning. Holy cow I am bad at that telescope and holy cow it is a steep learning curve but I hit JUST THE RIGHT spot with the focus control and it popped into perfect focus – so I learned THAT tonight, go slow with THAT knob or you miss everything, 1 millimeter in either direction and it’s a blob, but it DOES have a perfect place. If I never figure out how to see ANYTHING ELSE with that telescope, that moon is good enough! That telescope is bigger than I am and I got like a dozen new mosquito bites dragging it out to that field and it was totally worth it. That was mind-blowing.”

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.