Avulsion for once

April 24^th to May 7^th

I take pride in my ability to adapt my body to changes. I learned to skate by watching the greatest hockey team ever (The Candiens of the early seventies). I’d watch how they’d kick and slide and imagine myself doing the same, trying to actually feel my muscles perform the actions.

I learned to golf pretty much the same way, ended up with a not too poor swing by watching Niclaus and his ilk.

I learned to swim by watching Bruce Robertson.

Okay, maybe my father had a lot more to do with those things than I typically give him credit for, in fact I may not have tried most of the things I did if he weren’t there.

But I did learn to drive stick by watching NASCAR in the early ’80s!

I do train well through visualization, pick things up naturally. But partial weight bearing?  - DENIED!

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get the timing down, it either felt like I was feathering it or I was simply plopping down on the boot, worse I couldn’t get the crutches to the correct length to handle the transitions. It was a mess.

So I pretty much gave up. I spent pretty much all of 4 days trying to get the whole partial weight bearing thing to happen before I gave up and tried to go to a single crutch, which turned out to be a different fiasco.

I was getting way to much torque on the crutch and I ended up stumbling on it more that walking, so I gave it up too.

So on the 23^rd I crutched back to the office and tried the partial weight bearing thing on the way, it really wasn’t too bad but it didn’t feel like enough and dealing with the wonky sidewalks was bad enough, when I got back to the un-even floors of the office which are disguised by the geometric designs on the carpeting I nearly lost it. I tried again on the 24^th and spent the weekend getting from point to point in the house and even going grocery shopping, but by the middle of the trip through the grocery store my crutches were in the cart.

The next week I spent trying to keep myself on the crutches but I only really had them with me for times when I wanted to go fast or get people out of the way when getting off the subway, or keeping people out of the way when others were getting off the subway (really people - you wait until everyone gets off the train before you try getting on - or you get whacked in the shins by an aluminum crutch)!

Over the course of Week 6 I went from partial weight bearing to carrying my crutches most of the time, that first weekend in May, my second weekend in the boot, I mowed the lawn - the first mow of the season and to top it off I use a reel mower instead of a rotary. It was interesting to say the least. Still it worked out very well and proved that I was well on my way.

By the start of Week 7 I was using the crutches only if I was really tired but I was already noticing that my “Crutch Conditioning” was beginning to wear off. I couldn’t handle the crutches for as long as I had on week 5.  I was down to being able to cover maybe 200m at a time before resting where 10 days earlier I was doing a full kilometer or more without rest.

There wasn’t much pain and the scar has solidified so that there was very little red. I’d get some swelling and occasionally I’d pull a pillow in to bed to help me sleep, but I only tried to sleep with the aircast on for about 3 hours before I gave up on it. Once I had the aircast I slept without weight on my leg and was able to sleep under the covers for the first time in 5 weeks. When I slept with my leg raised I was down to using a single pillow and I would take to boot off as soon as I sat down on the couch.

The second weekend, the weekend I mowed the lawn,  I actually started moving around the house in sock feet. The first couple of times heel walking but it didn’t take long for me to adjust to a more or less regular stride. I had most of my range of motion back so it wasn’t too bad, I just didn’t have any power and if I set my foot down wrong there was considerable pain - so I just didn’t do that.

On May 7^th, the say I was to go back in to the clinic I got up, got my breakfast wandered around, read the paper went down to my home office, fooled around with Assassin’s Creed for a bit, wandered back upstairs had my shower got dressed and then put on my boot. I carried my crutches with me when I left the house, didn’t even use them to get down the porch steps, though I did start using them when I got in sight of the bus stop and kept them in my arms until I got down into the waiting room for the clinic. When they called me in to the ward I carried my crutches with me, say for a while after taking my aircast off while I waited for the surgeon he showed up, glanced at the scar, noted that the holes in my heel had completely disappeared, tested my range of motion (over 80%) and tested my strength (illiciting another ‘whoah’) he then pronounced me good enough to go full weight bearing in the aircast and told me to come back in a month.

Which I did.

Sorry, no pictures…