26 and standing, nearly

It’s been quite a big week (which seems to be my standard opening sentence for this blog) - turning 26 earlier this week seemed like a good time to rediscover my left foot. After a fairly average previous week learning about my wrist, I was ready for some good news.

I’ll start with Tuesday morning, which was spent at yet another frustrating appointment at the Alfred. This trip was made even more special when I was left in the x-ray waiting room without being checked in to said x-ray, resulting in a nice 1h30 spent waiting for no real reason. I’m sorry if this sounds a little bitter, but it’s becoming a theme for many of us here and it makes those outpatient appointments a real horror. The upside of the appointment was that I was able to see my brother Rob, who had surprised me from Sydney, and I had my right arm re-cast and I was able to pick a colour. The Swedish doctor responsible for setting the cast suggested red for my (distant) Norwegian background, so red it is. I’ll have this cast for another 4 weeks. I’m still yet to find Dr Karl again.

Once I returned to the safe haven that is the Epworth, I went to a late physio session and returned to my room to see my Dad, who had also surprised me by coming down from Sydney. We did some family presents and caught up on news before Mum disappeared…then Rob….then Dad. My expectation for my birthday was that there might be a home cooked meal brought in, maybe a cake and generally a pretty quiet night. It turned out to be a bit more than that…around 35 of my friends and work buddies came into the Epworth to help me celebrate. I was a touch overwhelmed and lost it for most of the night - apologies to anyone who tried to speak with me because I was mostly a mess. It was a strange feeling to have my ‘normal’ life merge with my temporary life here but it was touching to realise that most people in the room had already been to visit in some capacity since the accident.

Mum will hate me for this but I’ll use this blog to say thanks to her for pulling it all together. She bent over backwards to make it all happen and she had me totally surprised. Thanks also to Dad and Rob for coming all the way from Sydney for the day :) And of course thanks so, so much to everyone who came, it made the 4 week milestone post-accident and birthday so much more than I could have asked for.

The next part of this blog is about finding my left foot (sort of). Since receiving the news from the Alfred that I could start to weight bear on my left leg, Chris and I have been slowly working on putting pressure through my foot. It hurt a heck of a lot and I wasn’t thrilled every time Chris retrieved the gutter frame towards the end of each session.

We’ve worked at it incrementally each session and I’m happy to say that I can now ‘stand’ on my left leg :) It’s a bit of a false stand because I start from a fairly upright position and I’m only putting about 50% of my weight through my leg but the feeling of being upright is quite incredible. I can do 2 sets of 5 reps and by that point I’m exhausted and ready to finish the session.

On my way up to standing…

‘Standing’, with gutter crutch. It’s a bit of a balancing act not putting weight on my right leg or arm.

What’s next? I’m due back at the Alfred in 4 weeks so until then it’s mostly focusing on building strength and ROM in my left leg. I’ll then need to work on endurance so that I can start to use crutches. Another area to work on is sleep. I’ve been exhausted for the past two weeks straight, I feel like I haven’t been able to get on top of sleep at all. Just when I get to lights out at a normal time, I wake up at 6 the next morning for my painkillers and I feel like I haven’t slept. As much as I love the visits, I’m really going to have to cut back. With 3-4 hours of physio and appointments each day and a stream of nurses, doctors and others through the door, I think it’s wearing me out. If I suggest another day for a visit, I’m still really looking forward to catching up but it might not be the day for it on that particular day. I’m trying to clear the next two weeks as much as I can for some real downtime, let’s see how it goes…

I also had a visit from two dogs over the past few days - Gemma, my usual Thursday visitor - plus Mal and Frankie last weekend :)