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THR Diary of my journey to happy times

Woohoo! Good for you! :yay: :happydance:
You may be all good tomorrow but if you're a little sore, it may be because you went all day without an assistive device for the first time. I'm happy and excited for you! Let us know how you feel tomorrow.
Hopefully peachy :)
A great weekend to you!
@Klassy
 
Hi @Carriemay60 , thank you for kind words. Yes I do push more when H away, because
1. He is very protective, so best to get on with some things when he doesn’t see and worry. I was left with strict instructions not to go out in the blustery wind, but I needed the fresh air so I did.
2. He is very helpful and I can be lazy. If I have got myself breakfast and lunch, I usually sit back and enjoy dinner brought to me, or if I’ve just settled down and then realise I’ve left something in the next room, H will jump up to fetch it before I’ve got to my feet. Home alone, if I want it, I gotta get it!

Yes, the idea is a little push but not too hard. I think I am at prime time for an invitation to the ODI Club, will try to resist!
 
Thanks @Layla . I woke up stiff but that soon eased off. I will use crutch indoors intermittently today, pacing myself. I have been out for a gentle half hour walk, with 2 crutches because it is still very windy. Various bits of my operated leg ached at different times - kneecap, inside thigh, outside calf. But the pain was mild and went away after a few steps. Now I’m resting with ice.
 
@Klassy It sounds like we're married to the same man! :)

I had to bite my tongue yesterday so I didn't bite his head off when he was fussing and coddling me because I was a bit cranky. I really miss being a bit more independent.
 
Uh oh! @Carriemay60
It's only going to get worse before it gets better with your upcoming surgery on 4/4.
Better start training him now. IMPOSSIBLE, right? :heehee:

I hope you ladies have a nice weekend.
We're freezing in my part of the world. Currently -13F / -25C Brrr!
:snow plough:
 
Oh, @Klassy and @Carriemay60! I think it's lovely your husbands are so protective. I am sure it could get irritating if they hovered too much, but what a gift to be treated like a delicate flower! My husband was very helpful and careful with me in the early weeks, but after about four weeks, when I foolishly demonstrated I was getting around pretty well, all this attention ceased and I was on my own. Initially, I didn't need to ask for something, he anticipated what I wanted--later on I would have to ask (sometimes repeatedly) and now we're back to, "do it yourself, Bub". But, admittedly I am doing pretty darn well for the most part. Still, I kind of miss the days of being waited on, far distant now...heavy sigh.
 
Day 61. Yesterday I went aids-free indoors for the whole day as a challenge to myself. Today I did the same because I kept forgetting to take the crutch with me! It’s weird how I can suddenly do what seemed impossible last week. Not walking quickly or naturally mind you, but with reasonably good style as long as I concentrate. All those Bonesmarties who told me not to worry, it would come, you have my full permission to nod wisely and say “I told you so”.

This afternoon I took another walk round the block, with 2 crutches because of the weather. I felt that I was getting up a reasonable speed. When I checked my time it was 23 minutes for 0.7 miles, ie 1.8 mph. Not so very fast. Clearly that breeze I felt on my face was generated by Storm Eric and not by the swiftness of my transit.

However, looking back, I see that on Day 41 I covered the same journey at 1.2 mph. So a 50% improvement in only 20 days!

With this rate of improvement, I should achieve a 4 minute mile on May 25th. And then break the 100 metres record on June 24th.

Just call me Usain.
 
Usain and not Insain :-)

My physio told me that if I got a bit sore from the walking to reduce the length of stride and distance and concentrate on heel
And for. Hopefully you will be fine but might be worth beating in mind just in case.

Amazing how one forgets the crutch at home eventually!

I am a bit stuck at the moment but hoping to get some improvement in the next few weeks. Since back at work full time I have regressed a bit. Oh well I am not a very “patient patient”’
 
You’re X-ray looks identical to mine.
You got left done aswell x.
Are you having any trouble with flexing the hip? my hip flexors are really tight.
 
Thanks for the tips @SurreyGirl . Incidentally, on stride length, my phone counted my steps for the 0.7 miles as 2560, just over 17 inches average. My normal, pre OA, stride was 24 inches ( short steps cos I have short legs). Just another thing I can monitor for progress back to normal.

I’m sorry to hear you feel you have regressed a bit. I think the return to work, and the current UK weather, would be enough to slow anyone down after your fantastic holiday, plus all that fun and then travelling would have tired you out. I hope another week or so will see you surging ahead again. You have been doing so well.

Yes, I think we all struggle with patience. Whoever came up with the word “patient” to describe people in recovery had a warped sense of humour.
 
Hi @midouri, thanks for stopping by!

I have a lot of stiffness in various directions. I think that is to be expected, given the swelling from the operation plus a lengthy period of being less active and having restrictions on various movements. It is only in the last few days, as my new hip has begun to feel more secure, that I have begun to do much work on stretching.

However, from the outset I have followed the instruction I was given to lie down flat on my back, one pillow only under head, for 20 minutes twice a day. I think this has kept my hip flexors from tightening as they might do from sitting up with legs elevated. If you haven’t tried this it seems to me (no expert, just a fellow patient) that it would be a safe thing for you to try and see if it helps. Any other stretches, or worries about stiffness, I think it would be best to check with your physio, because our bodies are all different plus you might have had slightly different surgery ( eg anterior vs posterior approach) even if the end result is the same.

Hope your recovery is going well!
 
Oh, the stiffness! I so relate to that, @Klassy, it seems like it ebbs for a period and then, given the snowy, cold weather we're having here in the PNW, it returns with a vengeance, plus my aching, unoperated left hips is also loudly complaining--argh! But the only thing for all of us to do, I know, is keep moving. Sure, do more or less daily depending upon how you're feeling, but you must do something, or that's my belief anyway. As you've noted, if you look back at how far you've come then it does make you realize that, slow though it might be, you ARE making forward progress. Have a great day!
 
Day 62. I rang a plain course of Grandsire Doubles on our Saxilby.

I realise this won’t mean anything to anyone reading this unless you happen to be a change ringer (and possibly not even then) but for me it is a momentous step back to my favourite hobby. Very very very very pleased!

Translation below in case anyone is interested. Warning, obsessive alert! No obligation to read on!

Change ringers ring the bells that hang in churches and in a few other towers (eg there is a purpose built belltower in Perth, Australia, and one at Smith College Massachusetts). There are usually 5 to 12 bells, each tuned to a different note. Each ringer controls one bell, by pulling a rope that comes through a hole in the ceiling to make the bell swing. It takes a lot of skill to get the timing right so that the bells ring one after the other with perfect spacing between them. Heavy bells (up to a couple of tons) need strength, but for the lighter, higher pitched bells it’s mainly technique not strength.

Once you have got a bell going, it will swing at its own rate and you can only make it swing a little bit quicker or slower. So a band of change ringers can’t ring tunes, because it’s impossible to eg ring on a half beat or ring a bell twice in succession while the other bells wait, because all the bells are swinging. If you do hear a tune coming from a belltower, it will be a carillon, where the bells are fixed and struck by hammers. What we do is change the order of the bells by swapping with the bell ringing immediately before or after. So if there are 5 bells, they always start in the order 12345, then they could change to 12354 ( bell 4 is pulled a bit later and bell 5 is pulled a bit earlier so they swap order) or 21435 (1 and 2 swap and 3 and 4 swap). But they can’t go directly from 12345 to the order 54321. Originally (when this style of ringing was invented in the 1500s) this was a physical limitation, it was just too hard to make the bells change speed that much. Nowadays the bells are hung using ball bearings and are easier to ring, so we could, with a lot of effort, go from 12345 to 54321. (The way they are hung has been modernised, but they are still the same bells. I regularly ring bells that are over 400 years old, even 600 years old). But the traditional way of ringing is only to swap with the bell next in order. Change ringing is all about tradition.

Given this convention, that we only swap with the bell next in order, the goal is to ring all possible combinations without repeating a single combination, and end with the bells back in their start order. So we might ring 12345 21354 23145 32415 but we won’t then go in the order 23145 because that repeats a previous combination. There are thousands of ways of achieving the goal, particularly when you have 8 or more bells. A set of rules for swapping over the bells to produce one set of combinations that meets the goal is called a “method”. Ringers like me and H love to learn different methods and get together with other ringers to ring them. “Grandsire doubles” is one of the oldest methods (dates from 1600s) and is very simple, it is the first or second method people learn.

All ringers meet up with other ringers in a tower to practise or perform. But the true obsessive also has a small “dumb bell” in their home to practise alone. We have one of these, of a brand called “Saxilby”. There is a weighted wheel in our loft and a rope comes through a hole in the ceiling of our spare bedroom. Pulling the rope to swing the wheel feels just like ringing a real, lightweight, bell. But it doesn’t make a sound, or our neighbours would hate us. It is connected to a computer and a very clever program makes the sound at just the right time, and also fills in the sounds, and a computer generated image, of the rest of the ringers.

From a THR perspective, ringing requires sufficient recovery to balance comfortably for 40 minutes or so swinging your arms up and down rhymically every 2 seconds, with a little bit of knee bending to maintain the momentum. So it’s not really something you can do on crutches. Plus most towers have a spiral staircase of about 50 steep, uneven, somewhat crumbling stone steps. Plus the sort of ringing I like to do has very complex methods that take a lot of mental acuity. What I did today was 3 minutes of simple stuff on the equivalent of a baby bell, after climbing a normal flight of 14 stairs. With a bunch of cartoon ringers who didn’t complain about my timing being way below standard. But it’s a start!

PS well done to anyone who read to the end of this!
 
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