🛫 🇮🇹 🙅 😭
80 days since I crashed my bicycle in a freakish way and for the first time in over 25 years and broke the right side of my hip. (Based on the x-rays “shattered” might be a better verb.)
Things I still cannot do:
- Lift my leg up while flat on my back. This is one of my PT exercises and it’s not because it hurts. It’s because no matter how hard I try, I can’t make those muscles (mostly the hip flexor) do it. This is concerning.
- Stay standing or seated normally for long periods of time. I often have to sit with my leg slightly elevated and the knee slightly bent to bring some relief from the constant pain. My PT had a fancy word for this position but I’ve forgotten it.
- Stop taking pain meds (unless I want the following list to shorten considerably)
Things I can do only recently and with great difficulty:
- Walk
- Put on my right sock, right shoe, or pants
- Drive. I’ve only attempted twice, once last week and once today (doctor and PT visits, respectively). It’s getting in and out of my sedan-shaped car that is the issue. Once driving I am ok, but I drive slow, give everyone plenty of space, and stay off the highways. At traffic lights I use my hands to adjust my leg if it has slipped from optimal pedal-operating position.
- Pick things off the floor or reach below knee-level. This requires a slow-motion dance-like move where I swing my right leg back to decrease the angle of torso-to-leg.
Yesterday my wife and two of my kids left for our spring break trip to Italy, to visit my stepson who is studying there this semester. It was planned long ago and both of my children’s first time out of the country. I waited until the last possible day to make my decision to stay here. Hopefully I do not have to explain that this is a depressing state of affairs. It is also challenging given the lists above. Carissa left the fridge, freezer, and pantry stocked with food I can easily prepare. We have all manner of delivery services these days.
Based on the report of their travel and first day there, I made the right decision.
Still, I do not know how those with permanent handicaps or chronic pain do it, especially those without strong social nets of others who can help them. Everything takes forever and involves tolerating some level of pain. Starting last night a smoke detector started beeping despite having a fresh battery. I put in earplugs and managed to sleep through it, but this morning the effort to get to the bottom of the problem and solve it almost left me insane.
I kept the days off work, as I was about a day away from utter burnout anyway, but something came up the night before my first day off, so I have worked a little to at least assist with the triage.
Meanwhile the world burns.