I'm going on six weeks in the boot. I recently
had a follow-up appointment with my orthopedist, and it wasn't the happy-making
experience I thought it would be. I have a tendency to put all of my hope and
faith for recovery in one appointment, when really healing is a months-long
process, which I've been reluctant to accept. I thought I'd be able to go in to
the appointment, convince my doctor of my self-diagnosed neuroma, and get myself a
cortisone shot. But that's not what happened. First, I don't think he was
convinced I had a neuroma, but even if he had been, he wouldn't give me the
shot. He said it could interfere with the healing of my fracture. Oh yeah, that.
Probably responsible doctoring, but I wasn't satisfied.
He had me get an x-ray to see what we could see.
He said everything looked normal (which doesn't mean anything for my fracture),
except that I had a sesamoid bone in my second metatarsal head. We all have
them naturally embedded in a tendon within our first metatarsal head (I'm kind
of a foot expert now), but I guess I have this extra one? I wasn't clear on
what that meant. I don't think they just grow suddenly, but maybe I've always
had it and it got shifted around and caused inflammation and irritation. Or maybe it
was nothing. When I asked my doctor about how it was treated, he mentioned
something about possible stem cell therapy, and I tuned out and gave up. I knew
nothing could be done for at least another month, for which the doc wanted me
to continue wearing the boot and then come back for another check-up. Before I
left, he told me to look forward; don't look back on all the time I'd been out
of commission and in pain, he said.
It reminded me of what the sales guy at my gym had
told me the day before, after I broke down crying when he asked me how my foot
was (poor him). He told me, "Look up. Don't look down; there's nothing
good to look at." So, with these directionals in mind, I tried to improve
my outlook.
This same gym guy (whose name I forget, but he's
super nice) told me about a chiropractor who was "amazing."
He'd told me this before, and I pretty much disregarded it, thinking, I've been
to a chiropractor before and it was useless. I also kind of figured the gym had
a referral deal with the chiropractic office, which turned out to be true. But
this time I really had nothing to lose by making an appointment, so I thought,
why not? Long story short, I saw him, I had a good experience, and I'm going to
continue treatment to see if it helps. More on that later.
In the meantime, I've been trying to stick to a
regular biking and swimming schedule, but it had started to get harder to stay
motivated. I was going to go on a group ride--I even had a couple of confirmed
"buddies" who would go my slowish speed--but I chickened out the
morning of the ride. I was too afraid. And as it turned out when I later
prepped my bike for a solo ride, I had a flat in my rear tire. This has never
happened to me. The front tire is one thing, but the rear--I had no idea how to
get the thing off. Several YouTube videos later, this is what my disassembly
looked like:
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I eventually did get it off, changed out the
tube, and got the tire back on. All said, it probably took a couple of hours.
For frame of reference, bike mechanics do this in a couple of minutes.
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| Good as new! |
Later in the week, in untimely fashion, I
attended a flat clinic at my local bike shop, Outspokin Tampa.
I was like teacher's pet. I knew all the things that could go wrong, because
for me they did, so I knew the good questions to ask. It was an extremely
informative clinic, and I highly recommend that anyone new to cycling attend
one (earlier rather than later).
I was doing really well with swimming--up to
3,000 yards in a workout, and then my left shoulder started hurting. So I had
to back off of that for a little while, which was depressing. Swimming was my
new happy sport, and it gave me confidence because, even though I was new and
still had lots of room for improvement, it felt good and right to me. Well,
until it didn't.
But after some rest, I was able to get out to a
group swim tonight and really push myself. I've never done anything but
straight laps back and forth continuously until I'd met my desired distance.
But tonight I did some interval training with a coach, Leo, and got to see what
it felt like to go all out for time. I think I did 100 yards in 1:44, which,
from what I know about swim times (not much), is very average. But I enjoyed the competitive feeling,
which I haven't had since I last ran a race in April. And now I have a time to improve on.
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| We couldn't touch the ground. Some serious doggy paddling. |
Throughout all of my difficulties with
motivation and feelings of hopelessness about running again, I could never get too down because of
these two loves:
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| Movie night! It was all fun and games until someone threw up :/ |
Depression is sometimes easy for me to sink into, but my nieces
give me a reason to be stronger, to be a good role model, and to try to stay
positive. They don't understand my fears and anxieties about my health; they
care about what immediately affects them in their lives. They have questions
that constantly need to be answered, and they need to constantly feel cared for
and loved. These things help me stay present. Plus, they're just so darn cute.
So spending time with them has been important to my healing.
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| "Tita this is for you and I love you." |
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