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.