Marking the spot

Yipee!  Clearance to put full weight on my right leg converged last week with the temps rise above freezing.  This, of course, meant going outside--finally--to walk.  Steve accompanied me and I had either my grandfather's 200-year-old cane (just a guess) or a hiking pole.  We started with up and down the street and increased each day.  After successfully enjoying a walk on the Peoria riverfront with Ellen, Kyle, and zooming roller-blading boys yesterday, I decided that today was time to go back to the the lake--where IT happened.  Sidewalks were all clear of ice, but plenty of slippery goose poop remains.  Careful.

About halfway around is where I had fallen on January 5.  We stopped there.  This is the spot, right?  We noticed a mud patch where water from yards had drained across the sidewalk.  Yep.  That would explain the sneaky hidden ice although the route had been dry up to that point.  I remembered lying there and looking around to see if help was at hand; Steve remembered finally finding me and carrying me to the car—with the aid of the helpful guy who came by walking his dog. 

Then a spot of color caught my eye—yellow and orange.  I took a couple steps closer and bent for a look.  My mask!  There in the mud was the mask I had apparently been wearing that day.  I recognized it as mine:  handmade from a yellow t-shirt and potholder loops.  It had been perfectly marking the accident spot for eight weeks.  After all, who picks up an unknown person's mask from the ground during a pandemic?  It may have been sniffed by a dog or two though.

Hands

 I wouldn’t have expected a broken hip to take such a toll on hands, but it has.  In the early days, I had to use hands to move the injured leg at all, picking it up and putting it down to get to the edge of the bed, for example.  Hands were often called on for moving my torso, both in bed and in a chair, searching for comfortable positions that the legs usually find by themselves.  Standing and sitting to or from a chair or the floor or in and out of the car all called on hands in the beginning.  Then of course, there was the walker and putting weight on hands and wrists with every step.  

Even though by now the extra load is mostly just down to walking, about a week ago, faithful hands started to complain.  Then I noticed I was getting little calluses starting on my palms.  What to do?  An internet search of hands and walkers netted nothing helpful.  So I came up with my own mitigations. 

First I took two sponges, hand sewed a couple of Amish-made fluffy pot holders onto them, and pushed each one into the bottom of one of those never-fit-anyway hospital socks.  To keep them easily available, I folded the top of the socks over each side bar of the walker and affixed underneath with big safety pins.  Voila!  I have nice padding that can’t get away from me or left behind!

Then I also started varying my hand position with the walker.  Rather than the natural grabbing, I experimented with keeping my palms more flat and open and not always in the same spot.  This has helped.

Finally, the hardest one.  Say I’m on my feet and want to get from the head of the bed to the foot.  My habit has been to lean onto the bed with both hands, palms down, and fingers spread.  In this way I can “walk” my hands down the bed so that I’m never putting full weight on injured leg—not yet.  This puts a lot of stress on hands and fingers.  This is normally fine, but after a month of so much of it, I’ve been getting strong “Stop that!” signals.  If I simply curl fingers and put the weight down on knuckles like a monkey, wrists not palms take the weight and there’s no pain.  

I’m so looking forward to switching the cane!  That will relieve my right hand of its extra work.  Lefty, however, I’m still gonna have to baby as I can.  :-]

Updates and a Slow Down

 Here are a few updates before I sign off for a while.

Except for going from car to buildings, I haven't been out for a walk since Jan. 21, the 40* day.  It's just too cold and intimidating.  Spring has been faithful to come in the past and I trust it will come this year too.

Thigh is responding much better to "move" signals now, not like before the accident but definitely improved from that January 15 entry.

I am now able to go up and down and up and down the stairs for a bit of exercise.  :-]  Rolling from side to side is easier and I can doze on my injured side for a little while.  In fact, tonight I plan abandon my downstairs nest for sleeping in our bed.  Ahh.  Hope it works well!

So, lest I get boring, I plan to give this blog a rest for a week or two and check back in with how it's going when I get fully released from using the walker.  Thanks everyone for your much appreciated support.  Cheerio!

PT

I lost a lot of personal power on January 5, power to move freely, to walk, even to stand.  The surgical bone repair was a huge Step One in restoring those abilities.  But since then my empowerment team has been physical therapists—God bless them every one!

A high point of my hospital stay was the therapists coming in the morning after surgery and getting me up on my feet—well, mostly one foot.  Standing upright and then sitting in a chair was such a relief.  They accompanied me, with the walker, to the bathroom, maybe 20 steps away.  It was exhausting and exhileratiing.

OSF PT staff came three times during that next 24 hours, and I tried to get as much as I could from each visit.  Is it ok to try this?  How do I do that without hurting something?

Once home, I called to set up ongoing appointments near our house.  "Not until next Tuesday?  Is there any way you can fit me in today?  Just name your time."  At 4 p.m. I met PT Beth who evaluated my abilities and gave me home assignments plus twice-a-week visits for five weeks.  My diligence and these work sessions with her and Kim have contributed greatly to progress in movement. These two challenge and encourage me.  They listen.

I shudder to think what likely happened to people with this injury a hundred years ago.  It could have meant not walking again and the serious consequences of that.  So I push on with cheers from my empowering physical therapists.  Big thanks to them!

Second Ortho Visit

 A second visit to our most skillful orthopedic doc has come and gone as of this morning. And once again I'm a tiny bit disappointed. 

Dr K comes into the room, takes a look at the Xray on the screen and says, Wow!  You're doing great.  That's remarkable!—something like that.

Steve and I exchange a glance because to our untrained eyes that Xray looks exactly like the one on the screen two weeks ago.  

Anyway, I was hoping to get released to put more weight on my injured leg, but despite the good report, once again the wise and experienced doctor counsels patience.  "You're doing great," he says.  (Quite likely a fair number of orthopedic patients are twenty years older than I am.)  "This is healing so well.  Let's not push it.  Whatever you're doing is working, so keep doing that. Two more weeks with the walker." 

Ok, Doc.  Sigh.  I can continue in this holding pattern.  It's not like I'm going to go anywhere outside right now anyway.  It's twenty-five degrees with snow and ice all over.  Not a good place for me this winter.

"What I have been doing" has actually changed.  At first it was pick up the walker, set it a few inches out in front of me, step gingerly up into it with injured foot, and then lean my weight on the walker to bring the other foot up beside.  Repeat.  So, on the tile floor the sound went like this:  thump, tap, step, thump, tap, step. 

But lately, I've pretty much just been pushing the walker in front of me as I walk with a little steady pressure on the frame.   So it sounds like rolla, rolla, rolla, with steps mixed in—left step a little more solid than the right.  Does that make sense?  Can you hear it?  😅

Anyway.  I do want to cooperate with and not stress the healing process, so I'll keep "doing what I've been doing" and we'll see how it's going in a couple of weeks. 😎

Switching Up Meals

Nothing but ice chips were offered to me in the hospital for 24 hours after I fell.  No food was fine.  Didn't feel like it; didn't miss it.  It actually took a few days for me to start getting my appetite back, and even then my old companion Dark Chocolate Craving was subdued.  I decided not to invite it back, well, at least not to the same degree.  One line of reasoning says sugar is acidic to the body and therefore not conducive to bone building.  Diabetes is also a risk factor in my family.  Etc, etc.

The other big change that Steve and I are trying is switching our main meal from evening to midday.  I remember my parents doing this at about our age and it has served them well.  So for the last several weeks, we've had breakfast, dinner, supper instead of breakfast, lunch, dinner.  Because Steve is retired now and it's winter and people aren't eating out much because of COVID-19, this has been a fairly easy swap.  Light suppers are good, sometimes just a big salad, or a bit of leftover something, or just popcorn.  Tonight we had a baked sweet potato with fixins; last night roasted veggies and walnuts with apple salad.  Don't forget the protein.  It works.  :-]   

Tracking Insurance

 We have not seen the hospital or surgery bills yet, but some of the others are starting to come in.  I am not a numbers person, so trying to keep all the charges and payments straight is stressful.  But I feel like it's my job to stay on top of what's happening with my own medical expenses.  Ugg.

A friend from the Fitness Center was hit by a car as she walked across Florida Ave near her home a year ago.  She has recovered, but said that dealing with insurance became a full-time job for her for months afterward.  

An added complication for us is that Steve retired this fall and we switched from employer-sponsored insurance to Medicare.  So there's a new system to figure out.  My care on all counts so far has been commendable, and I'm very thankful for what the insurance pays!  So enough complaining, Self.  Just stick with tracking it.