I’ve done 5 weeks in plaster now. That’s 35 days in a cast from my toes to my knee on my left leg. From the end of week 4 the foot started to feel really solid again with no pain. I can sometimes wiggle it and find an interesting sensation, like probing a painful tooth with your tongue, but that’s about all. Looking back through my tweets I see that I was predicted to not be walking without pain until 8 weeks or so, so that’s encouraging. An orthopaedic colleague suggests I will be in trainers for a while when the plaster comes off, and that’s fine with me. With walking and some work in the gym the strength and fitness of the quadriceps and hamstring muscles in my left leg have started to match that of my right leg agan already. Some of the work I’ve been doing in the gym has strengthened pre-existing weaknesses in my hip and core muscles to also better balance between left and right sides.
After periods of going nuts I’m starting to enter a new phase. Thanks to international adventure racing 1st year student star “Jacket” John Laughlin and a pile of inspiring DVDs he lent me my brain is feeling a bit better. But with 5 weeks of, essentially, sitting on my arse I’m falling back into that phase of, “do I really want to train every day for hours & hours”? My new found laziness is suggesting I take it easy. Swim every day? Are you mad? You want to go out on the bike for how long? Why? Part of my brain is sounding like normal people. I try to avoid being normal (normal is another word for “average”). If it’s wet and cold when my plaster comes off I may have to push hard to get myself outside. But I doubt it. I’ll lay down a plan and follow it, measure progress, and find out where the pain is.
I’m back in fracture clinic a week on Tuesday. I’ll look after myself for 11 more days and hopefully my consultant will tell me I’m good to go. When I leave the care of the wonderful NHS I’ll surround myself with the continued care of the University Sports Village and get myself back to form. That’s half the fun.
