Life of Wry

That’s tonight’s sunset. And this might be a pre-storm sky.. they’re predicting rain tomorrow and if that happens, it’ll be the first rain of 2012 and the end to a long dry spell.  I have to say, it’s been lovely, unseasonably warm and dry, but very un-wintry.  I would really enjoy some inclement weather.  I’d love to see about six months of wet and cold (that won’t happen), only because it looks like I’m going to be spending a lot of time over the next half year–at least–inside, sitting… and hopefully repairing my stupid achilles tendons.

A friend, Karrie, a physical therapist, came over today to provide a second (or really a sixth or seventh) opinion on what’s going on with my tendons. After hearing the whole story and doing an assessment, she affirmed that they’re messed up and it’ll take time and a serious commitment to get them back.  She estimated a year of immobility.  Really, she said that.  It was all I could do to keep from crying.  I was actually told a similar thing last week by an orthopedic surgeon, a podiatry specialist, who said these kinds of injuries are notoriously slow to heal, far dicier and less straightforward than bone fractures.  Almost cried then, too.  And promptly, reluctantly, canceled plans for Kilimanjaro this summer.

Immobility. Casts. Sitting. A year.

I have really messed up my tendons.

Sort of wish I’d gotten that message two years ago when all of this started. Honest to god, numerous sessions with numerous physical therapists never really got me to that realization.  It was only after my first visit with Dr. Fredenburg last month that I began to understand the degree of damage and what it would take to heal.  And even then, it took two visits with him to fully comprehend what he was getting at.

Not sure if this is because I didn’t hear what the therapists and the doctor were saying all along or whether they just didn’t fully grasp and/or convey what was going on.

If they said it, I certainly didn’t grasp it, and was way, WAY too casual about the tenderness and soreness and just thought I could keep walking and hiking and trekking and climbing (and swimming and biking and stretching and massaging).  I mean, soreness is not a foreign experience among active, athletic people, even oldies like me.  So I just thought, huh, I’m sore, so I’ll stretch and ice and massage and do the exercises the therapists gave me… and eventually it’ll resolve. In fact, I was committing violence upon my tendons with every cavalier step.  Engaging the joint and aggravating the tendon was preventing the fibers from healing, and on top of that, the assault to already-damaged tendons was leading to the formation of more and more scar tissue.

Wish I’d understood that.

Achilles tendons are super tricky.. they’re avascular, meaning blood flow is very minimal, which means healing can take a long time.  You don’t mess with tendons; if you stress them, you’re going to need to set aside adequate time to heal them, and if you don’t, they get worse.

Such, such, such a bummer…. if, you know, you have a mountain to climb.

So, check this out:

For some reason tonight, not sure why, I found myself in my Twitter account reading tweets I’d posted over the course of the last couple years.  (I haven’t tweeted much in recent years, so this wasn’t a lot of reading.)  I was quite surprised and sort of chagrined to come upon this tweet, posted on December 9, 2009:

Ran whole way. No stops. HILLS, BABY!

Turns out, in December of 2009, I had spent two weeks in Palos Verdes while my mom was undergoing open heart surgery.  I had set aside mornings for exercising, as I was spending the rest of the days in the hospital.  I started with my usual, hilly-ish walking route, but as the days wore on began to add a little running into the mix.  I discovered, after years of not running (post-pregnancy, loosy goosy knees..), I could run again (!), it felt fantastic, and pretty soon I was running with a vengeance…  And I guess I overdid it. Physical therapists will tell you, achilles injuries are most often the result of too much, too quickly.  Factor in age, hills, lack of stretching…  a predictable disaster.

Talk about a smoking gun.  The tweet shows pretty much exactly when and how I screwed up my achilles tendons. Great.

The real bummer is that I hurt myself two years ago.  I knew it then and saw a physical therapist within weeks of doing it.  Had I dealt with it correctly then, I wouldn’t be dealing with casts and splints and heating pads and ice packs and crutches and All This Sitting.

A great quote I read the other day went something like this: Don’t look back, we’re not going that way.