Brace for Impact

It's Monday and I would love nothing more than to report that I am hitting the pool tonight. But sadly I'm still at least a month or two away from being able to swim. Actually a week from today I see the doctor again and will find out what the next few months look like for me, what my physical therapy schedule will look like, and when I can start swimming, biking, running, or even walking on my own two feet again.

I've managed now, thirty days into this ordeal, NOT to have a complete meltdown, I've had mini-meltdowns. Sitting in the shower for instance, on the lawn chair that fits perfectly in there (thank you Vossler), I'll try shaving my legs. I know, WTF am I trying to shave my legs for?! I'm doing it for me damn it, so shut up. Like I said, I'll try shaving my legs, I won't be able to set my left foot down in order to prop my right leg up for a proper shave - so I end up teetering back on my bony ass, balancing; shaving cream in one hand and a razor in the other.

Then BAM! Shaving cream smashes to the floor, I flinch and almost slam my leg against the shower wall to brace for impact - but bracing for impact is the last thing I should be doing. I cringe at the thought of what could happen. Gather my thoughts. Look at my surroundings then lean down to get the shaving cream. Son of a bitch, the shaving cream has rolled under the chair to the back of the shower. I can't reach that. Looking around I see my snazzy conditioner, that should work.

By the time I get out of the shower, toweled off and am working each leg slowly into my stretchy pants I realize that I forgot to shave the front of one of my legs. I nice strip of hair running up my leg. Screw it. I'll get it next time.

The Gym Two Days After Thanksgiving

I don't know that I've ever seen the Midtown YWCA quite so busy. There was a frenzy, a sense of panic in the air as we arrived. Standing in line to get our cards swiped there were people waiting to get a new membership, people trying to use guest passes, and others just frantically pushing to share their nakedness in the locker room. I annoyed someone enough, hobbling along on my crutches, that they sped past me to go through the turn-style. Phew! I hope they made it to their step-class in time. Close call.

I of course took the elevator up to the second floor - nice and slow. I spent a decent amount of time working on upper body with free weights. I'm used to people looking at me funny for a number of reasons. Tattoos. A chic in the weight area. A chic with tattoos in the weight area on crutches. Whatever. It felt good to move my muscles, and to work up a sweat. Then I moved over to the floor to do a nice circuit of core hoopla. Having worked out with Killer-Keeler for so long I'm pretty good at just making it up as I go along. What I loved most was that I'm on the floor, crutches to my left, 10lb medicine ball in hand and this very large muscled woman is working her kettlebells in front of me, gives me the nod of approval, as if she was saying "Don't let it hold you back girl."

This weight-thing continues to be an issue. I think that a post or two ago I wrote that I was 112lbs fully dressed with my boot on. Yesterday, same deal, fully dress with the boot I'm down to 109lbs. Not good. Pete's still force feeding me. I'm eating damn it! I'm eating. But I'm still dropping weight. I'm hoping that getting back into a workout routine with help to increase my appetite and add some muscle mass. Fear not my fellow friends, I've got personal trainer/coach/boyfriend/prison guard Pete watching my every move. I'm a lucky girl.

Black Friday

Black Friday is the name given to the shopping day after Thanksgiving. It was originally called Black Friday because so many people went out to shop that it caused traffic accidents and sometimes even violence. (Source: Wikipedia, Black Friday). Later, the Black Friday name took on a different meaning. It was used to reflect that it was a profitable day for retailers. Accountants generally use black to signify profit, and red to signify loss when recording retailers' books. 

For me Black Friday means rolling into a quiet office, listening to my iPod and getting some clean-up work done at my desk. Emails, files, the stuff that I never have time for. About half of my co-workers trickle in at various times. Some stay for an hour, some for the day. There's a nice peace about the air and we're all pleasantly hung-over from food. 

This year we had the pleasure of hosting Thanksgiving at our house again, which included a wonderful visit from my brother and sister in law. Interestingly my brother has been become quite the Cross Fit junkie. Along with that he's been following the Primal Blueprint for his diet and has seen amazing results. They both have in fact. Pete and I do pretty well in terms of the quality of foods that eat, very little if any processed foods, lots of veggies, lots of fresh fresh fresh. But we do eat carbs, pastas, quinoa, etc. I'd be interested to see what would happen if we leaned more toward the Primal Blueprint.

I'm looking forward to spending some more time at the gym next week. I have two more weeks in this air-cast with no weight on my foot. Hopefully I'll be upgrading to a walking boot! I cannot wait to put my foot down! But I know it will hurt like a sonofabitch.

29 days after surgery... as I was climbing into the tub tonight I was simply amazed at how colorful my foot was. That in fact the blue of that toe just left of my big toe was very similar to that of the bathtub. The wrinkliness of my skin isn't from soaking in the tub, it hadn't even hit water yet, much of what you see below is still surgical tape covering the incision.

On a happier and more attractive note...

Today was also the two-year anniversary of our first date (ahhhh). Pete brought me a turkey sandwich while I was at work, then we cruised around.

Our cruise included a trip the magical land of Gear West Bike & Triathlon, which always is a good time. Aside from picking up two Spinerval DVDs (which only made me sad that I can't ride right now), we also managed to take advantage of several other sales that they had going on. Kevin and the team at that store never cease to amaze me. For being total gear-head dorks, they are never jerks - which as many of you know is hard to come by. They're honest, funny as hell and will make sure you're fed and caffeinated by the time you leave. Its always worth the drive to Long Lake, every time.

Back at the gym!

I'm not crazy enough to have attempted anything like a real workout. Okay, maybe I am, but I didn't. I drove for the first time today and it felt great. Pete and I headed to the gym when I got home from work. I was psyched to go for a number of reasons, the least of which was to have people look at me like I was nuts.

First order of business was to weigh myself. Now this is not something that I would normally publicize, but this is my blog, about my training and goals and my weight is absolutely a part of that. Last year I gained weight, more than I would have liked. Now this year, actually since July, I've been dropping weight, again, more than I'd like. I'm a tough broad to please. I peaked at 130lbs in June and today I weighed in at 112lbs (fully dressed and with the boot on, so more like 105lb). This is lighter than I'd like to be. For those of you paying attention, when one begins to drop below their ideal weight you'll begin to lose muscle. I'm 5'2" on a good day and so a good weight for me would be a muscular 115-120. On a small frame five or ten pounds is a huge percentage of my weight. I've worked hard for my muscle and I don't want to lose it. Right now, being more sedentary its tough to have an appetite at all. I need to work harder at grazing throughout the day, and packing higher quality foods into my meal plans. I'm lucky to work with amazing people who have been more than happy to help me out along the way. I need to take advantage of that. Aside from adding a solid regime of supplements to my routine, I'm also looking at adding more meaningful calories. I'll let you know what I come up with for food that keeps me happy.

Today marked 19 days since my surgery. How do I feel? I feel like I had surgery 19 days ago. I think that my attitude has been good and my moods somewhat stable, I haven't had a full meltdown yet, but I'm sure one is coming. I wonder who will feel the brunt of that blow. I'm dotted with some colorful bruises from various spills, catching myself before a spill or just plain running into things because I have three legs that work and one that doesn't.

My left leg looks like shit I must say. I don't expect it to look good, don't get me wrong. All muscle tone is gone. My ankle is bigger than my knee. The incision is still covered with flesh-toned tape so that appears to look ok, but the colors that are developing around my whole foot continue to be impressive. The only time I actually take the boot off is to change my clothing, shower or ice my foot. Then it goes right back on. I'm still happy to have that giant contraption protecting my foot. I'm completely used to sleeping in something that for all intensive purposes is a ski boot.

Going to the gym felt great. I did about twenty minutes of ab work on the floor and with a 10lb ball. I hobbled to a few machines to do bicep and tricep work, and then found an upper body cardio machine. I had to laugh because I completely, COMPLETELY tanked on that. I haven't gotten my heart rate up in nearly three weeks and in under ten minutes on that upper body cycling device, I pooped out. Rather than getting frustrated or pissed, I just laughed it off. I managed to get a good 45 minutes of NOT SITTING ON THE COUCH-in before I came home and watched The Biggest Loser. Pete of course was racing around the track at record speeds when I found him. He looked great of course.

All in all, I feel great. Today was a good day.

Day 19...

Yeah, its still a little fat

Are these two feet from the same person?

This was the glamor angle, I think it really brings out the color of my eyes.

If at first you don't succeed, take the pain medication

Yesterday down right sucked. I went to work, propped my foot up on my desk and went about my day as usual. The only time I got up was to go to the bathroom, otherwise I was at my desk. The only problem was that earlier in the day (as you'll read from the previous post) I fell. By 10AM I was beginning to pay for that fall. The pain started slowly and came in waves. It didn't really throb, but rather pulsed. There is a difference. By noon the pain was evident on my face. As people walked by and made eye-contact I'd get the "Geez, are you ok?" question. More and more the answer in my head was "No, I'm dying!" But to my audience of passerby's I simply told them that I was fine.

At 1:30 Pete texted me, letting me know that he was heading home from work. I quickly returned the text asking if he could pick me up. By this point I couldn't see straight the pain was so bad. I think I said good-bye to folks at the office, but maybe not.

By the time I got home I was in such agony that I realized the one pain pill I took wasn't going to do a damn thing. This was more pain than I've felt the entire time I've been laid up. Sharp shooting pain, throbbing knocking pain. Sometimes in the area of my incision, sometimes just my whole damn foot. I called the doctor's office. She was in surgery, they left her a message. I closed my eyes, moaned in pain and waited impatiently for her to call back. By 4:45 I realized that the doctor's office would be closing and my window to talk to her was getting smaller. I called back. This time I got the after-hours answering service. Shit! I left a message knowing that the on-call doctor would get back to me.

Eventually I got a call back from the on-call doctor. I felt silly of course for having called, but the pain was so bad. And something didn't feel right. On that scale they give you to rate your pain, one through ten, I was at a solid ten. I've never been at a solid ten before. I can handle pain. I was told to take the boot off, look at the incision and after examining it, and telling the doctor how it looked, it was more than likely that during my fall I jostled the soft tissue around the bones. I had actually taken my temperature too, knowing that a staph infection is nothing to mess around with. No fever.

Eventually my doctor was out of surgery and called me back. She told me that I've probably backed out of the pain meds way too early. While I've been doing everything right, aside from falling, I needed to keep up with the meds and realize that this is going to take time to heal. After getting off the phone and realizing that I wasn't in imminent danger, I took more pain killers, melted into the sofa and breathed a sigh of relief through my tear-soaked face.

I woke up around 3AM in pain again, and was just reminded that I have to stay on top of controlling this. That I'm not a weakling for needing more than a couple of Tylenol. I'm curled up right now, haven't gotten out of bed yet and don't plan to until around 1PM. I know that Pete's frustrated with my stubborn need to do more, be active and not want to be a burden on him. The lessons that I'm forced to learn right now are all about how I treat myself, how I think other people are perceiving me, that I don't have to be a super hero and that if I try, I'm more than likely going to hurt myself.

Stay put lil lady, there's no rush.

Side note: Reluctantly, over the last week my very dear friend Diane has been driving me to work. I say reluctantly because its my left foot that's booted up and I drive and automatic. She however has really dug her heals in and insisted in driving me. I've never seen her so adamant, so I've taken her up on these offers. In retrospect, she's right. Its not just about driving to work, but parking, hobbling two blocks to the office. Diane - thank you. And then having to turn around in four hours and move my car again. As of Monday parking at work will no longer be an issue. After eleven years, my company is moving to a grand new location in NE Minneapolis. We've renovated an amazing old warehouse space. That's a whole different story, but I'm proud to be a part of that, so I had to mention it.

They done broke me

Two weeks. Its been two weeks since I had surgery on my foot. What was wrong with it? To call it a bunion would be a mild description of the foot problems I was having. I'm liking this to reconstructive surgery of my foot. Take this bone, move it here. Now take that other bone and pin it over there. Pull that, yank it over here. What next?

About ten years ago I noticed that my left foot didn't quite look like my right foot, that the knuckle bone of my bit toe really pushed outward. This made wearing high healed shoes uncomfortable and standing for long periods of time quite unpleasant. It wasn't until I really became active again, that my foot began to down right hurt. I could run a all the live long day and it would be fine, but as soon as I stopped, that protruding knuckle bone of my left foot would scream like &*%!@)! After putting up with two seasons of too much pain for no good reason I decided to see an orthopedic surgeon, actually, one of the best in the state. The picture that she showed me made it look like my foot was already broken. There wasn't a "growth" on that left foot, but rather my left toe was turning in towards the other toes, pushing that knuckle bone out - way out. The long and the short of it was that if I didn't have this taken care of there might not be many more "seasons" of running left. I sat with it and realized the best time would be in the Fall. The summer season of triathlons would be over, and a winter of crappy movies and red wine was ahead of me. Let's do it!

Before...

After...

The surgery went a bit longer than expected. They had to cut into my achilles tendon. That's right. When they were getting ready to wrap up my foot/leg my achilles was too tight to stay in the position they wanted for healing. There shouldn't be any repercussions from that. Runners tend to have tight hamstrings and achilles to being with, so this is a good reminder that in the future - there will be MUCH more stretching.

Megan was the most amazing person to bring to the hospital. She asked all the right questions, made sure I understood what they were telling me, none of which I remembered later of course. And she reiterated everything to Pete precisely. I was in such great hands. She brought me magazines, the new Dan Brown book, treats, nail polish (blue of course) and lots of hugs and kisses.

They gave me lots of drugs including a wonderful catheter that they stuck directly into my sciatic nerve. The very nice anesthesiologist bore a hole through my hamstring to put the catheter in. I was awake for that lovely part. This is what's called a block. Basically blocking the nerve impulses below my knee. I went home with that block in place and Pete got to take it out a few days later. I thought he might barf on me, but he didn't.

I was put in a cast that weighed more than I do. I looked like I had a ginormous club foot. The cast went all the way up to my knee. As you can see from the photo, this did not lend itself to mobility. So I stayed in bed. Happily.

Day two or three? Or was it four. The Oxicodone was at work...

Pete had to help me do everything, including walking me to the bathroom. Luckily I could pee on my own, but just barely. I didn't leave the back bedroom for days. Tigger, my main man, was curled up with me day and night, the way a good orange tabby does.
 
Yesterday, the cast was taken off. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. What was under this monstrous beast of a cast? What was it going to look like? As the doctor cut in the cast and pealed back the layers, my little foot began to appear. I was so happy to have that big thing come off, but as I saw more and more of my foot, I was a little scared. They cleaned it up and removed the stitches, a lot of stitches, and gave me a removable boot. They said that it was healing up really well, probably because I totally kick ass and did everything that they told me to.

I'm not allowed to put any weight on my foot for at least another four weeks, at which point I'll go back and they'll have another look. In the meantime I'll keep it up, ice it, and pretty much treat it like a damn Faberge egg. I'll spend another month or so after that learning to walk on it.

Its worth it though. I'm looking forward to a winter of upper body and core strength training. I'll be looking at the Spring season from a vastly different perspective. There are a lot of people that are going to have to put up with me over the next few months, and I'm grateful for each and every one of them.

Don't look any further if you think you might barf at gross pictures...






Day 12, the cast came off....

The colors of my foot continue to evolve into a rainbow of bruise variations. I'm looking forward to what tomorrow brings.

If you see me on the street, please don't trip me!

 

My posts this winter should bring an interesting change to my blog!

Wish Listing...

Dear Santa,

Once I get the use of my leg back and can actually ride a bike again, and am really really good, and eat all of my vegetables, could I please please please have this toy that costs way too much money?

If you have access to the interwebs up there in North Pole, click HERE>>

Thanks,
Jenny in Minnesota, formerly of NOLA, schooled in NC and NH, spent some time in Florida for a spell, Texas during 2nd grade, lived all over NY, you remember me...right?

A Body in Motion

Surgery complete. Foot in a cast. Now all we have is patience, time to reflect and a schedule of winter training that won't involve the lower half of my body. Can she do it?

After what has now been five solid says of letting my ass go numb from the one position I can sit in, I'm sorry, rather, that I can lay down in, I'm asking myself if come next week, will I be willing and able to get the hell up and go work out? Something in me says "Yes." Between now and whatever day becomes Day One, you'll have to wait. I'll continue to keep this foot, now reinforced with hardware, elevated. I will do everything my (bells ringing) orthopedic surgeon tells me to do. I'm anxious to get moving, my guess is that I will have no trouble.