August 2006
Friday August 11, 2006
The Orthopedist 3
The day after I returned home from my father’s house, I had an appointment with the orthopedist. My husband is well enough to drive, and he drove me to and from the airport as well as to the doctor. My father and I enjoyed our time together. I will try to visit him yearly from now on. The airline treated me like a queen with a broken leg. I have never enjoyed such comfortable travel. My dad told me to save the cast for future journeys. Truthfully, I would rather stand in line than suffer a disability, but the joke was well-intended.
I have been anticipating this appointment with the orthopedist since scheduling it two weeks prior. After a total of four weeks of healing time in the cast, calcification (bone growth) is usually visible in an x-ray. That signals sufficient stability of the break to allow the patient to move her knee. In layman’s terms, he could cut the bulky restrictive cast below the knee and allow me more freedom. I am taking this ordeal one step at a time, and rejoicing in every victory. Bone growth and knee movement represent a significant improvement over my previous circumstances.
He clipped my x-rays to the light screen and announced that they looked “terrif”. I could see a seam where the bone had cracked, but it appeared rather trivial. Certainly nothing had shifted or popped out of place. He could indeed cut the cast. I crutch-walked across the hall to the “cast room” and hopped up on the table, beaming like an idiot. If I got this excited over mere knee motion, I will probably wet my pants when he takes the thing off completely. The doctor brandished a small handheld rotating saw and began his work. He sliced the cast in several places then pried it free. It yielded willingly, and he trimmed the padding that cushioned my leg inside its protective shell.
During my flight home, a very young airline copilot warned me about the stiffness I would experience when I first regained knee freedom. I recalled hearing something similar from a teacher when I was in grammar school. The orthopedist provided the same information. He said the knee will feel funny for a couple of days. I was not worried about it. That is, not until I got a good eye-full of my right thigh. I did not recognize the thing. I looked at it in horror and announced, “My leg is so skinny!” And not in a good way. After four weeks of disuse, the quadriceps had deteriorated. My leg looked like a lump of flesh draped over a big femur. It grotesquely reminded me of my late grandmother’s body. She suffered a crippling case of arthritis. Her legs were thin, tubular, and shapeless. Her knee bulged roundly between skinny thigh and calf. My case was not so severe, since my knee was not swollen and deformed. However, my muscle had atrophied and the knee locked. Flesh hung from my inner thigh and rippled with cellulite. And I had been working so hard on toning my inner thighs! All of that work and more spiralled down the drain.
Panic began to tighten its grip. My beautiful skating muscle was gone. In only four weeks of isolation a muscle that had existed for years of my athletic life had withered into nothingness. The doctor would not let me ride an exercise bike. I could only do simple leg lifts. He said I would need physical therapy and a lot of it. He believed all adult patients with these types of injuries need extensive therapy. “But I’m not typical,” I wanted to scream. I am in the shape of a women ten years younger. I can run for miles, I can skate for hours. Hell, I could probably kick your ass. My husband confirmed that this doctor did not appear to exercise often. I will show him. I will come back in four weeks with my quadriceps restored and a full range of knee motion. Damn it, I am not typical.
So the work began. I could not move my knee, not at first anyway. This was just another challenge. I moved the joint slowly and carefully, pushing slightly each time. I stretched it over a pillow. I lifted the leg in every possible direction. Degrees of freedom returned, and I had regained about 75% of my flexibility by the next morning.
The cast comes off on September 12th. That will be a big day in my life. I will be ready.
Read about my other trips to the orthopedist: 1 2.
Week of August 13, 2006
Not a Bowl of Cherries
Remember that book “If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What am I Doing in the Pits” written by humorist Erma Bombeck? The book was published some time in the seventies, and I found a listing for it as early as 1971 on the Amazon.com web site. I was an elementary school child when this book topped the best seller lists and confess I have never read it. Okay, now that I have dated myself, I will move on to the point. My last entries have been generally up-beat expressing a positive attitude toward my injury. Most of the time that is my attitude. However, I am good at keeping my chin up with a smile pasted to my lips, even under the worst circumstances. I am not a cry baby and can remember the times I have cried as an adult and count them on the fingers of one hand. I never cried over this broken bone. Actually, I whimpered a little bit over the telephone from the emergency room to my husband in his hospital bed several miles away. But I was not unhappy for myself. I was telling him how sorry I was that I had done this when he needed me. So this has not been the bowl of cherries I might lead readers to believe with my bold decision to take an airplane trip with my leg in an above-the-knee cast. Let me express a little bit of the “pits” part of my experience.
The worst part of having a broken leg bone is that it prevents me from walking which inherently creates a serious handicap. I cannot walk. I have not walked since just before I stepped on the ice on July 11th. Not only do I have a broken leg bone, the break is to right leg. This keeps me from driving, thus leaving me dependent on others. My body is unusually strong, and I can compensate to a point for the inertness of my right leg. Once I got used to my crutches, I became rather fast on them. Crutch walking is a great abdominal workout, and an attractive set of muscles is plainly visible on my stomach. Unfortunately, I have traded my right quadriceps for some ab ripples. Restrengthening that quad is a challenge. I flex it and lift the leg at every possible angle with an aerobic weight perched on the knee, thigh, calf or ankle. Curvature is slowly returning to my leg. I doubt I will be able to reshape it completely until I can walk again allowing the muscle to perform its natural function of supporting my weight. So, not being able to walk is the pits.
My house is not handicapped-friendly. The “new” additions to the old farmhouse were built in 1970 (the same vintage as Bombeck’s book) and are probably not consistent with current building specifications. No handrails accompany any of the steps. Three shallow steps separate the sunken family room from the studio we use as a computer space. I can easily crutch-hop down these, but cannot get back up. The master bedroom is sunken by five steep steps. I am afraid to hop these and descend them on my backside, something I am very sick of doing. Obviously, I butt-climb them too. I have gotten courageous twice with the family room steps and have attempted to hop up them. Each trial was a disaster. The first time, I stumbled and put my injured foot down as hard as I could in a reflexive action to save myself. I stomped the foot so hard, I called the doctor and asked him if he wanted to x-ray me again. Since I was not in pain and had not cracked my cast, he declared the event a false alarm and told me (with a chuckle) to stop falling.
That advice should have been easy enough to follow, if I were not so pig-headed. Tired of climbing steps on my rear end, I attempted the family room steps again thinking if I can just master these, I will gladly conceded the other set to the bedroom. So I lifted myself with my crutches and popped up the step. Without a handrail, I had no means of steadying myself after the jump. Jumping was never my strong suit anyway. I crashed backward slamming my hip into the coffee table. This was the second most humiliating mishap of my injury; the first being the dive I took hopping over the threshold into the house when my brother-in-law brought me home from the emergency room. Now I have a hideous dark purple bruise on my hip about four inches wide and two inches high. I look as though I have been abused, if only by my own stubbornness. Inconsequential by comparison, I bloodied my toe trying to crest a step that divides our deck into two levels. The toe nail tore below the quick and has yet to fall off. Stairs are the pits.
All of these mechanical problems aside, I am forced to watch my musculature decompose, and there is precious little I can do to stop it. My left leg is big and strong as ever and growing even more bulky from hopping like a one-legged kangaroo. Meanwhile, I struggled with leg weights to regain a hint of contour in my right thigh. I lift hand weights daily and do crunches on the bed at night. However, there is no substitute for a good cardio workout. My jogging capacity has probably dwindled to near zero after I had worked so diligently to increase both speed and endurance. I don’t even want to think about what my first pathetic steps on the ice will be like. Obviously, I have already decided they will be pathetic. Not exercising is the pits.
At the end of a day spent crutch-walking, hopping, and struggling to complete normally simple tasks; I am completely exhausted. My left foot will barely clear the ground. When I am fresh, I can hop easily around the house, stop wherever necessary without losing balance, and resume hopping to my next destination. Hopping seems to be aerobic. But it is also tiring. This has been a very difficult episode. It has tested my physical and emotional strength, my determination, and the power of my spirit. I like to think I have triumphed. In my career as a skater, I have only fallen one time more than I have gotten up. It may happen again some day, but I hope not. Next time I will break an arm.
Week of August 20, 2006
Studies of Motion
Bizarre as it may sound, this injury has made me think about motion in ways I never could have anticipated. My understanding of motion and creating motion has been greatly enhanced. The motion I have analyzed and practiced is hopping, which I shall define for the purposes of this discussion as a one-legged jump. Sounds a lot like a skating jump, doesn’t it? In skating a rotational jump initiated from the one leg then landed on the same leg is called a “loop”. It has always been my best jump. My loops are very big. They are probably responsible for my uncanny ability to get around without crutches. I do not always use my crutches. If I need to get around in the kitchen or cross the living room, I will often do this without the crutches simply by hopping.
My hops are huge and powerful. I generate great distance and speed crossing the floor on my left leg. When I do this in public, at a restaurant or through a metal detector at an airport, people watch me; and not because I am grossly pathetic. My airport audience gasped at my coordination, and certain onlookers claimed they could not do that with two good legs. Yes, I am fit, but I also have good balance and coordination. I am still a skater even with my leg in a cast. I can hop considerable distances, pivot into a backspin position and continue to hop in another direction without teetering or wobbling. I move like a gymnast on a balance beam minus the flips and somersaults. Like a bicycle, as long as it has forward motion, inertia of that forward motion overcomes the pull of gravity which would otherwise cause it to topple over. For example, even the most experienced bicyclist would have difficulty keeping a motionless bike upright. Balancing on one foot is more difficult standing still than hopping. Try to stand still on one ice skate blade. It is hard to do. You will have to hop or shuffle around to maintain balance. However, an experienced skater can glide forever on one blade until he or she runs out of forward (or backward) momentum.
To contribute to the distance of my hops, I have learned the proper manipulation of free leg and arms. While springing from the left leg, I will kick the injured leg in the desired direction of travel. This allows increased distance and control. Sounds like a waltz jump or, better yet, an axel. The kick works for forward jumps and jumps taken from a turn. I do all of this wearing a ballet slipper on my healthy foot. The slipper is entirely made of leather and rotates smoothly on wood or carpeted floors. Wearing a sneaker would twist my ankle or knee because friction grips the rubber sole to the surface.
Working the arms further enhances the affect. Skaters throw their arms into a jump to gain lift and distance. It certainly works well hopping on the floor. I bend my arms and launch them forward with the bicep muscles and deltoids. From my experience, it seems the power comes from flexing the bicep and lifting forward in a quick sharp motion. The arms contribute most effectively when engaged just at the moment of hopping.
All of this probably sounds like a big “duh” to any skater who has taken private freestyle lessons. I know I have heard or seen it all before from one coach or another worded or demonstrated some such way. Yet, still I cannot do an axel. Still I cannot cover more than four or five feet of ice in a waltz jump. Apparently, I never quite got it. I really never had to do it. It would have been nice if I could have forced my body to tie all of these motions together to create whatever my jumps lacked. However, it was not a necessity. Lately, I have relied on these techniques to adapt to my situation and continue to live productively for the past six weeks. This time, I had to do it. I wonder if I can translate these revelations to my on-ice jumping. Strongly lifting with free leg and arms at the moment of take-off obviously adds to height, distance and control of a jump. Practicing this out of necessity has helped me to understand the benefits of coordinated motion. I did not expect to improve my jumping by having a broken ankle, but that might be exactly what happens.
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