Baking up a storm

Saturday involved about six hours of baking in preparation for my sister's kitchen tea today.  There were red velvet cupcakes, butter cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, chocolate mud cupcakes, mini lemon meringue cheescakes and amaretti (almond cookies) all in rather large quantities.

I was tired at the end of it all and my feet hurt.  My hips didn't.  There is no way I could have handled that much baking pre-op without some serious consequences.  Pre-op I would have started to have pain after about an hour and would have been hobbling around and feeling a rather intense amount of pain in my right hip.  By the end of the effort, I would have been leaning on walls, tables or anything close to get anywhere as my full weight on my right hip would have been screaming at me.  I would have felt the pain even when I sat and wouldn't have been able to get comfortable enough to sleep.  It is likely that I would have taken a couple  of panadeine forte to try and take the edge of a little bit, just enough to try to relax.  The pain relief wouldn't always take the edge off and never took the pain away completely.  The muscles around my hips would have been tight like rope and there would be some muscle spasming causing sharp stabbing pains as I tried to relax.  This was a a kind of pain that was significantly worse than my post-op pain levels.    

This pain would last for a number of days and see me fatigued for days after that.  My sister's engagement party saw me out of action for the best part of a week.  During that time I was on increased anti-inflammatories and additional pain relief.

Now, the day after, I'm just a little sleepy from having a busy weekend.  There is no pain. My calves and the muscles that run down the back of my feet are a little tight, as are my shoulders but this is what I would consider normal types of muscle tightness after standing with poor posture for that many hours.  I must have been hunched over to be tight across the back of the shoulders.  Awesome, hey!  I really do mean that.  A normal body reaction to poor behaviour.  Normal.  No meds.  Wow.

The countdown to my sister's wedding is on.  Next weekend we have dress fittings, the weekend after the 'Girls Night' and then the next after that is the big day.  I'm going to be in pretty great condition by then.  It's all happening.

Recovery Day

The post that was made yesterday was written on Friday morning after I read the RA Guy's post and was scheduled to post.  I was going to check it before it went out but I ended up doing very little yesterday except for sleep for most of day.

Friday was a big day.  I started off with Hydro and stayed in the pool for an extra 45 minutes after the end of my session.  I had to pick up a computer in town and then I headed home to read email, news and blogs and wrote a few comments like my post.  By the afternoon I was out doing grocery shopping.  This time, I went to the supermarket that was a longer walk from the car park to the store and only used the cane.  I was pretty tired by the time that I got home and hadn't expected to go out again.  There was a tentative plan to go to my sister's house to see her wedding dress that had just arrived, though I had expected that it would move to Sunday as when we had spoken about it, that seemed to be the preferred option.  This isn't how it worked out and I was out again very shortly after getting home.

The peak hour traffic south was pretty bad and a trip that would normally take about 20 minutes ended up taking more than twice as long.  The trip was ok and I was fine with the stairs to her apartment.  I had one of my niece-to-be's help carry things up the stairs but I think that I would have done that anyway even if I wasn't still sporting my cane.  The dress is perfect and my sister looks like the perfect bride.  I'd love to post a pic since I'm sure you would all agree that she looks perfect but that would be just wrong.  It's starting to get exciting now.  I just hope that everyone behaves themselves.  Weddings don't always bring out the best in people.  I'm not really up for arguments yet and tell people they are out of line.  I will though, if it that's what needs to be done to keep them in line and behave themselves.

There is still about 8 weeks to go until the wedding by which point I need to be walking without a limp.  I'm pretty sure that it is an achievable goal to halve that.  I've been practicing my walking every day.

Practicing walking is different than actual walking.  Practising means concentrating on everything to get everything right.  Even when I'm concentrating really hard, it's not quite there yet.  I guess that once I get it right, I'll have to practice wedding walking.  I don't want to confuse my brain too much too soon.

I got home by about 8:30pm and was pretty wrecked by then.  I was overtired though and didn't go straight to bed.  It took a while to wind down before I finally passed out.  That led into a whole day of naps as I got back on top of it.