It's all good!

Another great day. Feeling great. Lots of sunshine.

Two in a row.

Awesome.

Body Leader of the Month

Hey check me out, I've been awarded the title of Body Leader of the Month!

I've answered some different questions as part of the interview than I've covered here in the past so the article might be interesting to you.

A couple of notes about the article and pics:

Yes, Lori is short for Lorraine.  It's funny how different people know you by different parts of your name.  My husband calls me Lorraine (just as I use his full name rather than Mike as just about everyone else calls him) and this usually extends to certain groups of people where I've been introduced by him, or introduced where my 'legal' name has been provided. My brothers and sister still refer to me as Rain. One of my best friends used to call me Miss Rainee and that's now Mrs Rainee since I've been married.  Mostly though people call me Lori.  It's a lot easier to spell for people, too!

For the locals, you should be able to spot the venue of the first picture.  This was my very first outing and I wanted it to be somewhere that I felt safe so it's somewhere that I spend a fair amount of time. You can see my crutches in the picture.  If you can guess where it is, there might even be a prize for you!

The Pilates picture is actually from this morning.  We took a whole series of them and I'll post some more of them here.  This is a picture of roll ins from curls (bridges).  I've been doing these for a little while and think that some of the other exercises are a little more impressive, so I'll post those soon!

The final picture is from the hospital when I was first learning to walk again.  At this time I was still using the rollater so there was a fair amount of weight being put through my hands on the rails to walk.  The white lines helped me with my alignment.  There was a lot of looking down and focusing on my feet while I was walking within the rails.  In the beginning it almost felt like the messages from my brain  didn't get through to my feet unless I looked really hard at them!  (That plan doesn't really work all the time.  Sometimes you can look really hard at the offending limb and it still won't move.  They do now, so that's the main thing!)

Unscheduled Daily Activities

Some days I wake up and everything feels good.  It feels like I could get out of bed and things will just work like they are supposed to.  It certainly feels like it.  There is no pain anymore.  It isn't until I start to get myself out of bed and the sleepy haze wears off and I realise that things aren't quite there yet.  There are still a lot of exercises to get through and a lot of strength to still build.  I started of the day in quite a positive mood.  Last night while doing a few extra exercises, I found I was able to balance on my right leg without any support meaning that strength is returning to my hip stabilisors.  These are an important part of actually being able to walk without the crutches.  The left is still far to shaky to take the support away yet but hey, one out of two aint bad.

Daily activities are a huge part of building strength.  Incorporating activity into the day, even to add an extra trip up and down the stairs all makes a difference.  A piece of advice that I was given before I had the op was to do just one more than was on the list of prescribed exercises (without overdoing it - so I have to listen to my body pretty carefully so that I am pushing myself without hurting something that would stop me from doing my exercises the next day).   Using that theory, I have been trying to add more into each day.  Sometimes circumstances make this happen without me actually having to try.  Life often throws unscheduled curve balls just to keep things interesting.

Today, it was attempting to wash the car.  For those that know me, this really will seem like a very strange thing for me to get up and do.  I had a pretty good reason for it and the process was somewhat of an effort that I really hadn't considered being the 'activity' to add to today.  There was bird poo (or possible bat poo - it was brown and stuck like glue) on almost every single panel on my beautiful black car.  There was splatter absolutely everywhere.  I'm really not sure how it was entirely possible for this to happen without a flock of awful little animals deciding to specifically seek out and target my car.  I noticed the big splotches when I went out the front to sit in the sunlight to drink my coffee this morning.  A couple of weeks ago, I probably would have resigned to the fact that it would have to stay on there until someone else was around to take care of it as it slowly ate into the paintwork.  Today, I thought that I had the energy to give it a go.

I went downstairs and started to soak the large splotches with the car cleaner, I notice more on every single panel.  I probably spent about an hour shuffling around the car cleaning it as best as I could while my crutches were leant up against the bin beside the car.  I needed both hands, one for the car cleaning spray and one for the cleaning cloth.  I did ok as I moved around the car, though they aren't really real step yet, still more of a cross between a shuffle and a waddle.  After I had completely trashed three cleaning cloths, I called it a day and had another shower to clean the smell off me.  I don't think the smell really was on me but my brain seemed to think that it was and I needed to be clean again.  The cloths also needed to be cleaned and that required two trips up and down the inside stairs.  The stairs are slowly becoming a little easier.  The inside ones are narrower than outside but they seem to be not quite as high, so stepping up without vaulting isn't quite as difficult (still not easy, just not as difficult).  Overall this little unscheduled activity added a fair amount of incidental exercise today.

I am pretty worn out tonight which is a good sign that I have expended sufficient energy today.  Another day has passed on my trip to recovery and hopefully tomorrow morning I will wake again feeling good and it will be just that little bit easier to get out of bed.  I hope that my unscheduled activities that unexpectedly get added to my day tomorrow aren't quite as smelly as they were today.

Second Week at Home: The New Routine and Progress

Life is getting into a routine at home with regular exercise, walking laps around the house, regular good food and restful sleep.  I am ambling around on crutches with significantly more confidence.  The next walking goals are to increase the distance that I am regularly walking and get down to one crutch around the week of my surgical review.  Review is next Monday and I am moving towards having enough strength in my hip stabilisors to achieve this later in the week.  It's likely that my right side will be the stronger one as it has been throughout this process. There is still work to do and a lot can be achieved in a week, so I am hopeful.

The major change that I have seen physically in the last couple of days is the ability to lift each leg up from the bed into the air while laying down.  So far it's only about six inches from the bed though it is a good start and a massive difference as I haven't had the strength in my hip flexors to lift much more than half an inch until Monday of this week.

The other functional goals that we have as part of the first phase of Project Awesome are to increase the amount of stairs that I practice daily and to eliminate compensation vaulting on stairs.  The compensation occurs as I don't have the hip flexor strength to easily lift my leading leg to place it on the upper stair and have been compensating by lifting the heel of the grounded foot to gain the additional height to clear the step.  Though I have the strength and balance to do this reasonably safely, it isn't the best way to climb stairs.  I have to practice lifting each leg higher while activating all of the required muscles.  It requires concentration and a huge amount of energy to clear each step when leading with the right.  The left is still about an inch off and I am still practicing as I don't want the progress to stop on the weaker leg.

I also need to increase the amount of outings that I do each week to improve my confidence and stamina.  I am still wary of being out in public and the only way that will change is by getting out there.  I need a bit more practice so that I am soon at the point where I am comfortable going to the pool and starting hydro.  I'm probably still a few more weeks off that.

Grocery Shopping

Fuelled with the enthusiasm from the successful outing yesterday, we went out for coffee (so we could buy coffee beans) and grocery shopping today.  We started out at Merlo as we really needed beans and didn't have enough for another day.  I was a little scared to get out of the car into the crowd as it was pretty busy in there.  My husband convinced me to give it a go and again it worked out fine.  We had coffee and decided to give grocery shopping a go.  I figured that I wouldn't be able to walk down every aisle but I figured that I would go as far as I could go and then rest a while before continuing the process.

I didn't go into all of the aisles and required quick rests on the wheelie walker from time to time but I did make it back to the car!  I really need to get a pedometer so I can at least try to get some idea of the distances that I am working before I am completely worn out.  I was pretty wrecked after that effort and did very little for the rest of the day.

I've exceeded my outings target for this week on the Project Awesome goals and am pretty pleased with myself.

First Real Post-Op Outing

Today was the first real outing and my husband and I went for coffee and brunch at La Dolce Vita at Park Road, Milton with friends.  (I know I went to the hospital to see the social worker on Tuesday but that really wasn't a 'real' outing after being there for four weeks)

The trip was part of the 'Project Awesome' goals that I worked out with Paul from Body Leadership for my recovery process.  Reintegration into the real world is a little scary when you have been in safe places since a major operation.  I'm also very comfortable in my own space and am not getting cabin fever, so there it is easy for me to let time pass making the prospect of going out a bigger issue than it actually is.

The main reason that I had been a little scared about going out in public are all of the falls hazards that are outside of my control.  I also worried about available seating and whether toilets were going to be available that were accessible and the right heights.  (The toilets for some reason were a really big deal which is strange considering that when they weren't a problem - at the hospital - I didn't even need to use them and we were out for about two hours that day.  Surely I could manage a quick outing without having to go?)  I also worried about being stranded somewhere without being able to sit and not able to walk any further (highly irrational considering that was a) unlikely to happen and b) I wasn't going to be left alone).  All of these things were probably becoming bigger deals in my own head as I put off facing them.

I got to chose where to go out to and the conditions of my 'release' to help make me more comfortable about what we were going to do today.  I chose La Dolce Vita Restaurant because I am comfortable there.  I have spent a lot of time there and I know the staff well and also know the terrain well.  I knew how we could get in there without having difficulties getting me out of the car even though my disabled permit hadn't arrived yet.  About the only thing that I wasn't sure of was toilets.  I knew that the ones upstairs were a no go as there was a massive step to get into them that I had little chance of clearing on my own and the height of the toilets was probably too low especially without bars to assist in correct positioning to maintain the hip precautions.  I knew there were some downstairs (accessible by lift)  as well, but I wasn't sure what they were like either.  Google for once, let me down.  I didn't find what I was looking for.  It may not have been google's fault as the resource just might not be available.  How do people who have permanent conditions find out this kind of information?  Trial and error?  That seems absurd.  Is it even possible that one of the most popular coffee/dining areas in Brisbane doesn't have disabled toilets?  Surely they do somewhere?  I figured that they must and if they didn't, there was always McDonald's across Milton Road (After all of that worry, I didn't even use them and stupidly I didn't even check to find out exactly what was available).

We made it there around the time that we said that we would be there.  It takes me a lot longer to get organised at the moment.  Part of the problem is that it is easy to sit in the shower for long periods of time rather than have a quick shower to get ready.  The second issue are the Venosan socks that I still need to wear during the day.   I should have organised a 'sock helper' before now to assist the assistant helping me get these things on.  It's on my list to do over the weekend so that I can hopefully get something delivered early next week.  As they are heavy duty compression socks, they aren't the easiest things to get on.  With hip restrictions, they are even more difficult.  They are for a very good reason though, to reduce the likelihood of blood clots and for that reason we persist with them.  The third issue is trying to figure out all of the things that we needed to take with us that may or may not be required.  I reasoned that this was somewhat similar to trying to get a child out of the house and all of the things that they require.  It might not be as bad, though there were still a lot to consider.  We needed a pillow and a towel to try and adjust seating height so that I could sit and not break hip precautions, the wheelie walker in case this solution didn't end up being viable, another set of shoes in case the ones I decided to wear but haven't worn since the op didn't work out, tissues (yep I have managed somehow to get a freaking cold), medications, jumper and then the regular day to day items that you don't leave the house without.  In the end we made it and we had everything that we needed.

I had a mild case of anxiety as we were crossing the Captain Cook bridge and arriving at our destination.  As I got out of the car, someone I knew was walking through the car park and was a nice reminder that I was in a safe place.  I felt a little calmer as I got out of the lift and started to walk around the front past Alegria and saw more people that I knew having brunch.  The friends we were meeting with had already arrived and seating wasn't an issue once we had topped it up with the pillow and towel.  Quite comfortable actually!  There was no requirement to bring the wheelie walker out so I just used crutches which are not only more comfortable for me to use, but I feel better using them.  I know that there is no shame using a walker and if I had to I would, I just wanted to look like I was more well than that.

Brunch consisted of real coffee and a bacon and egg panino for me and was awesome.  Meds were taken with a sparkling mineral water chaser.  We were out for a few hours and then headed home.

On the way home I spoke to my sister who was in the city and asked her to go into the pharmacy for me.  She called while she was there so I could talk to the pharmacist to confirm what I could take to get rid of this cold.  Thankfully the blood thinners weren't an issue and hopefully I can stop suffering with the congestion and associated tiredness and step it up a little in the rehab.  She picked up some things for me and I had some cold tablets still at home that had the all clear so I had one of those and pretty much feel asleep straight away.  A few hours later, I woke up and felt a million times better.  I even did another round of step ups on the single stair outside (10 each side no vaulting) and feel pretty proud of that at the end of a big day.  My walking distance will be a bit lower today even with the outing as I haven't done as many laps around the house.  It probably balances out as far as energy usage goes and each day I do get a little more stamina to do more.

25 Days Post Op: The Home Visit

Today I got to go home for the first time in almost four weeks.  I went for about an hour with an occupational therapist to check things out in anticipation of me getting out of here on Friday.  My big achievements that were made today were getting in and out of a car twice, getting up my front stairs at home and getting up the inside stairs and out of the house twice.  (We really were only going to do it once as the point of the exercise wasn't to practice multiple times, just to check out how to handle things - but nothing ever goes smoothly and there were of course issues with the alarm that had to be sorted out before we could leave - typical)

We have sorted out the shower chair and I have figured out a place to put the crutches so I can get them to get out and we also sorted out the raised toilet seat as the toilet was too low and I would have violated hip restrictions without the higher seat above it.  These are the main two things that needed to be sorted out so that I can actually survive at home.  Good news was that our bed is also the right height and the only thing we really need to sort out is another comfortable chair to sit in when I am up.  We are going to look at one of those recliners that tips you out but I think we will need to go and actually look at some and see what is comfortable and high enough that doesn't dip back to much at the back of the seat.  We'll get home first and worry about that one early next week.

I am becoming more confident on crutches and though it is tiring to walk around, my stamina is increasing and I think that is making the other hurdles a little easier to overcome.  As my mobility is increasing, my hip flexors seem to be getting a little stronger as I am starting to see that there is a slight difference in the amount that I can lift my feet off the ground.  Today I spoke with the Physio that will be in charge of managing operation awesome (bugger normal!) also known as my home program and once targets are met the ongoing maintenance program.  It isn't going to be any problem at all to be re-assessed and an appropriate program written to strengthen up these stubborn little muscles that haven't yet joined the party.  I am looking forward to working with the Body Leadership Team again as I really have missed working with those guys!   Speaking of people I miss working with, I miss Pilates too - though that might be a little while before I am back to my usual schedule.  I can at least do bridges now (pelvic curls) and they are slowly getting better even if I am a little way of my pre-surgery capability.  It's unlikely that I will be using the bosu or a fit ball for a little while yet!  It's a step at a time at the moment and I know that once I'm home and under expert guidance that I will be making those steps at the right time and maximising the benefits that I will receive from the new joints in the long term.

Pain meds were reduced today and so far I am going ok.  The nights are the big test and those haven't been reduced yet so I am pretty confident that we are on the right path.  Today was a big day and so far there isn't much pain.  There is some muscle fatigue and aching though this is to be expected and isn't anything that is going to keep me awake.  I am hoping that what I feel now continues to be the worst of it as it certainly is manageable at this level and the level of activity I can do before it gets to this level is significant enough to see progress.

After the excitement of this morning I had a quiet gym session this afternoon with the regular drills.  We didn't do steps again today as there were probably as many today as the amount we did in practice yesterday.  I'm sure we will be back on them tomorrow and in the 'fine tuning' mode to work on not using the grounded leg to provide the extra clearance space required by pushing up on the toes slightly.  I'd guess and say I'm probably about an inch off that and I would expect to see that amount picked up in the next week.

All in all a good day with the slight exception of the possible cold germs that I may be carrying.  It might just be the really dry air-conditioning that is drying my throat out and causing me to start to lose my voice.  At least I hope that is all that it is and as soon as I am back in my regular environment everything will go back to normal.

It is time for sleep now.  It has been a really long day.  I hope I'm worn out enough to sleep in more than two hour blocks like last night.  Fingers crossed!

I just figured out that since I don't have to stay here all Friday and today is already gone, the countdown was actually wrong.  I only have two whole days left, Wednesday and Thursday!!