Left the house!

Got out of the house today. A friend was making her return to Olympic lifting after taking time off to have her first kid. 8 months post-baby, she's back on the platform. Her two goals were to make weight and not bomb out, and she succeeded at both and was pretty happy. I got to see a couple gym friends while I was out as well, so that was nice. We got rockstar parking, too - hooray for my parking pass.

I've discovered in reading many people's blogs that poop is a pretty hot topic post-ankle break. In the interest of accuracy of my experience, I will do so as well. :P I was pretty excited a week (!!) after my surgery when I finally pooped. I was even more excited yesterday, almost two weeks (!!!) after my surgery when I finally had a normal poop. In between, I had a week of, essentially, little fucking rabbit pellets. They were a frustratingly large amount of work for a small result, and I was constantly worried I was going to bust my damn staples. Yesterday I finally pooped like a normal human. And several hours later, made up for lost time and pooped what was probably a full week's worth. :P 

Weight-wise, I'm estimating I'm down about 7-8 pounds. I've gotten a little system where I crutch myself to align with the scale, hop up, get my crutches off the ground, lightly rest the bottom of my cast on the scale and hope it doesn't error. More often that not it seems to register an accurate (for my scale) weight. I'm about 1.5 pounds lower than when I left for Vegas. According to Amazon, my crutches weigh about 5. I don't know what the cast weighs, but I'd wager it's at least a pound. So yeah. I know I'm supposed to be cutting, but this probably isn't how I should be going about it.

My appetite is still in the shitter. I've gotten crap from my meal planner for eating too little - she told me I need to get up to at least 1,600 a day (I've been around 1,200). Between the annoyance of putting meals together on crutches and the amount of time it takes to get everything to the living room (not to mention how awkward - I seem to carry a lot of things in my mouth if they won't fit in pockets) plus the lack of appetite, it seems so much easier to just not eat. This is definitely still a work in progress. I'm thinking of adding in a couple protein shakes per day as that will kill two birds - I can up my calories, and ensure I'm getting the protein I need to promote healing. 

Trying to put a list of questions together for my follow up visit on Tuesday. What I've got right now:
1. What are the realistic expectations for recovery of mobility, especially dorsiflexion (this came from my physio, and hopefully will help me better understand when I might return to football, as mobility is going to be the biggest factor).
2. What is the soonest I can start active range of motion exercises to avoid stiffening in my ankle joint, and can I do it when I'm not in the airboot? (also from my physio)
3. What lifting movements can I start doing and when? 
4. Is there any cardio that I can do and when? (Ski erg, hand bike, rower with one leg, bike with one leg?)
5. Any commentary on bone density? 
6. Questions with respect to x-rays (ie. does everything look as it should/was my reduction successful)
7. What's the longest amount of time that I should have my foot not elevated?

Oh, I regained the ability to wiggle my big toe and my little toe. That was exciting.

Emotions...so many emotions

I feel like I'm on an emotional roller coaster. This morning I found out that I messed up on my Provincials declarations. I really wanted to not have any mistakes this year (and mistakes bother me in general) but it bothered me even more because I tried to put in a fail-safe this year of sending all of my Districts a complete list of all the teams declared at every level, asking that they double check everything looked correct. This District didn't bother. Anyways, so I have to make some changes. They aren't that big and they don't ruin anything really, but I broke down in tears. "Why does this bother you so much?" I don't know. Seriously. Because everything is amplified and I'm frustrated. It's tough too, because I have been having a pretty good week overall. I got out on Monday, and then yesterday (although there were some downs yesterday in terms of slips and falls and dogs) and I'm not really having any pain. But bam, EMOTIONS! I watched one girl's v-log of her ankle recovery today. It was 5 months post-surgery and she felt mostly good, but still couldn't run. I'm hoping that I'm different. Both my surgeon and my physio have said all things being equal, playing on Team Alberta is not out of reach for me. Time will tell. Just sitting here growing bone is challenging. From the videos I've been watching, my scars are going to be pretty gnarly. That's going to be pretty rough for me I think. The fresh incisions with the staples in just look so macabre. It looks like I'll go one of two directions next week when I go in for my follow up - there seems to be a 50/50 split between cast and air cast (while still maintaining no weight bearing) for the next four weeks. I'm not sure which one I'd prefer. Air cast means you can take it off, which would make showering easier, but would also mean I'd have to see my scars. Cast would mean I could see my toes. Don't ask, I'm not sure why, but I really like being able to see my toes. I guess we'll see what happens when I go in next week. Still not feeling any pain from my slip last night. I hope that means I didn't do any further damage. It still scares the crap out of me that I did. I miss my lifting already; the last thing I want to do is screw this up and make it take even longer to get back. Or worse yet, never get back at all. Another day down. Few more yet to go.

Ouch

Today the dog got excited by Marlies' mom coming to visit. He jumped into my cast. I screamed. He got really scared. I wound up having to console him. Figures.

Then at Marlies' soccer game my crutch slipped and I planted on my foot. Scared the shit out of me. No pain, so I'm praying no damage.

To finish off (because things come in threes) I was sitting on a table and tipped it. Thankfully this was like riding a slide and I landed quite gracefully flat on my ass.

In other news, tomorrow I'm not leaving my bed.

Day 6

In a couple hours, it will be exactly a week since my actual injury happened. Time flies I guess. My brain feels a lot less foggy today and my headaches are dissipating. I think this might have to do with reducing my painkiller dosages. I think I've had two today total. Honestly my pain seems really minimal, especially when I'm sitting with my leg elevated. Sometimes it makes me think that all of this is some kind of sick joke. When I stand up, I don't even get pain really - it's more the sensation of all the blood flowing down into my foot. My toes go from a fairly normal colour to dark, dark red in a matter of minutes. Today was a bit of a downer day, to be honest. It started with me waking up when Marlies woke up to head into the army. I then broke into tears because I was tired and couldn't get back to sleep because my butt cheek was asleep. Mar helped me put another pillow under my leg to kind of elevate my butt off the bed and alleviate the issue. I fell back asleep for another four hours or so, so I'll call that a success. When I woke up, I felt pretty down thinking about how many more weeks of this I have to come. While this one has gone pretty fast, there's still five more where I am completely non weight bearing. I feel incredibly guilty for the amount of help that I require. I had a friend over yesterday who kind of made fun of me putting foods in my pockets - I realize it looks pretty funny, but I really didn't want to ask for help in getting two turkey sticks and a pudding. Anyways, my pity party went on for a while. I forced myself to get up and get dressed to snap myself out of it: I put everything on myself, so I felt marginally accomplished and self sufficient for that. I also decided I was finally going to eat a proper lunch. I cut up some tomato and cucumber, weighed out my chicken and put everything in a tupperware with some pickles. I measured out some BCAAs and glutamine and sealed it up tight in a shaker. I put everything into a cinch bag, threw that on my back, and successfully got it into the living room. Took my vitamins, ate everything. Small accomplishments. The rest of the day was mostly uninteresting. I do like how Trigger loves to be with me: I also noticed tonight how much smaller my left ankle is looking: I think it's because I'm not able to work out, so my ankle isn't getting a chance to lock up (a problem I frequently have), so the swelling has actually come out of the joint. Or my body is just too busy swelling the other one to have time for this one.

Thoughts about my hospital stay

A few notes from my time at the hospital I want to remember:

1. This was my second trip to Emergency after a 9:00pm hockey game. When I was contemplating whether it would be better to make these trips during the day (as opposed to pulling pain-filled all-nighters) the triage nurse let me know that it's way crazier during the day. 

2. I'm always filled with some measure of trepidation when I do go to Emergency as to whether I have a valid reason to be there, or if I'm one of those people taking advantage of the system. While I could do without my broken ankle, on the bright side at least I'm two-for-two in terms of appropriate Emergency usage?

3. I traveled to Emergency in my skate because I was scared of what I would find (and also figured taking it off was going to be an ordeal). After removing all of the laces, it actually wasn't that difficult to get my foot out. I'm still hoping it saved me some measure of swelling. When you're trying to tell yourself that "maybe it's not that bad", looking down to find the little bump from your ankle bones in the wrong place is not very reassuring.

4. I was oddly calm when it happened. I was laying on my back on the ice, staring up and just said "this is not good". When Marlies got onto the ice, I told her I thought it might be broken, and she told me not to be so dramatic. I have some really great teammates who were able to lift me up off the ice and take my weight. It would have sucked to have to wait on the ice for an ambulance.

5. My teammates are pretty great and acted as human crutches to get me from the dressing room to the truck. This was also the longest hop of my life. My left leg still isn't 100% from my last injury (tear in my semitendinosus at its insertion on the pes anserinus) and forcing that leg into good status was not really something it wanted. We were about halfway to the lobby when I really wanted a break and realized there was really nowhere to take one. I was so happy when we finally reached the benches and I could sit and shimmy across. 

6. I broke down and cried when my x-rays came back and the doctor confirmed it was broken. The pain was tolerable. The knowledge that I couldn't work out for several months hurt way, way more. 

7. I wasn't too scared about having to be put under to have the bones reset - this reminded me of what they had to do with my dislocated jaw. Familiarity breeds comfort, I guess. 

8. As soon as they mentioned pins, plates, and surgery, I cried again. It just seemed so much more like a kiss of death in terms of time off and rehabilitation. 

9. Got to take my first ambulance ride to get from Grey Nuns to the Mis, where I would have my surgery. It made me hate Edmonton roads all the more as I felt every damn bump in the road. 

10. They prepped me for surgery immediately upon arrival, which seemed to involve bathing me with wet wipes. I then proceeded to lay in bed for several hours and wonder if I was actually having surgery that day. 

11. Signs that Marlies loves me: they came to get me for surgery late in the fourth quarter of the Seahawks game (right about when they were starting their epic comeback). She came down to pre-op with me. We "watched" the last plays of the game unfold on my phone. Seattle won the game right before they wheeled me in. I remember saying "you don't have to be here...you can go watch the game". She stayed.

12. I was actually really impressed with the nurse giving me oxygen. I told her that having the thing over both my nose and my mouth really freaked me out (claustrophobia) and she said they actually get that pretty frequently, and just held it over my face instead. A few minutes later I was out like a light.

13. Coming down from the anesthetics from surgery was quite the process. Marlies stayed with me from the time I left the recovery room until visiting hours were over at 9pm and man, that must have been a boring stay. I was in and out of sleep the whole time, and I'm not sure I even put together a cogent sentence during that time. 

14. Sometime around 1am I started to regain consciousness. I also got a nice nurse who played ringette, so we chatted about that. She also brought me some toast, cranberry juice, and two glasses of water. It had been 30 hours since I'd eaten anything, so this was exciting. It took me over an hour to eat the toast, but I managed to keep it down. 

15. Many blogs I've read about people who had ankle surgery describe their terrible experiences with bedpans. I am very thankful my experience involved no bedpans. Creepy commode, yes. But no bedpans. 

16. One of my roommates at the hospital was terribly weird. I was very happy to get discharged. People who pee on the floor for no reason...no thanks.

17. I'm very happy that my physiotherapist is an awesome guy. The one I had for "crutch 101"? Not so much. In particular, he seemed very confused and unwilling to accept the concept that I didn't have a boyfriend at home.

Day 4

Day two of working from my bed and day four since I broke my ankle. 

The pain is mostly manageable. I slept better than I thought I would last night - I was in bed and fell asleep quite early (9:30ish) and slept most of the night. I was up maybe around 1:00 for an hour or so (read some blogs) and then again around 4:00. I wasn't really up because of pain; more that it gets awkward only being able to sleep on my back. My pain levels seem to be greatly reduced at night. I learned the hard way this morning that they come back quickly. I got up to go to the bathroom about five hours since taking my last meds and the feeling of the pressure flooding into my foot was quite overwhelming. I was concerned that I might be bleeding from one of my incisions, but if it was it was nothing severe enough to seep through (which I was told was when I would need to worry/go back to the ortho clinic).

I'm not feeling as dehydrated now, which is good. Post-surgery I felt like I couldn't get enough liquids into me. I think the meds give me a bit of dry mouth, but I at least felt mostly human today. Appetite is not back yet, but I think I've eaten more than yesterday at least.

Getting food prepared is actually what I discovered is super annoying today. Actually there's the challenge of preparing food, and then there's the challenge of moving it somewhere to eat it. I asked Mar to help me put my meals in ziplocks and then I can leave that in the fridge in a bag so it's at least transportable for me out to the living room. Even something super simple like cooking up some ground chicken with spices seems arduous because I'd have to stand there the whole time propped up on my crutches (not to mention trying to reach in the cupboards for spices!). 

I feel like I mostly have my wits about me, but the meds definitely do fatigue me/leave me a little bit lightheaded sometimes. 

I spoke to my boss today and I'm not going to wind up going to our AGM this week-end. It was actually after I was telling him about the blood rushing to my foot/feeling like it was bleeding that he was like "yeah, you're not coming". It's probably the best decision and hopefully no one looks down on me for it.