Monday, November 12, 2007

Recovery - Week 17

I finally got the chance to get away from work and make a trip up to Canada. I've been up visiting my parents since last Thursday. It's been really nice to be away from home for a while, especially since the weather is something other than San Diego's perpetual summer-like conditions. I've gotten to spend a lot of time with family and friends, which for me is what life's all about.

I've been making some progress with regard to walking. Two Saturdays ago I started walking with a cane. It was pretty tough at first. So much so that the day after I was too worn down to use anything other than my crutches to move around. At this point I'm starting to get around quite a bit better. I can walk without the cane, but not too smoothly. Dr. Smith wants to see me walking smoothly, even if that means going all the way back to my crutches, so I'm sticking with the cane for now.

In another important development, for the past couple days I've been able to put my left sock on without any assistance. Ever since I hurt myself I've been unable to pull my leg up/reach down far enough such that I could get my fingers to the end of my left toes. The past couple days I've found that if I sit in a chair, put my foot on the ground and lean over as much as I can, I can get my sock over my toes. I'm sure all my co-workers will be happy to know that I'll no longer be showing up at work looking for one of them to help me get my left sock on.

Once I get back home on Wednesday I'm going to get on top of getting my bike rebuilt. The parts are all down at the shop, they just need to be assembled. Because I'd put a few dents into my road frame frame over the season, I bought an identical, used Specialized E5 frameset off eBay a couple months ago. I'm going to get the Campagnolo Record components moved from my wrecked bike onto the new frame. The handlebars that were on my old bike are toast, so I'll also be buying a new set of those. I may also need to buy a new shifter, or at least pay to have my old one rebuilt as it got pretty trashed during the accident.

My hope is that I can think about going on a casual ride within a couple weeks. I've been riding the stationary bike a bit as part of my recovery, so I know I can ride, just not very strongly. Hopefully when my bike is fixed I'll be able to go down to the shop, get fitted to it and take it for a spin. Back when I was in the hospital I can two visions in my head that kept me going towards recovery:

1. Getting back on my repaired bike and riding it away from the bike shop
2. Being able to get strong enough on my bike so that I could do my 65 mile Saturday ride like I used to

Based upon how I'm feeling right now, I'm pretty close to being able to accomplish the first of these two visions. The second one is still a long, long way away from happening, but I'm still confident that I'll get there as long as I continue to work towards it.

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