THR Heal first, then exercise, then dance!

[Layla]

Hi @An54
Lonely with hubs gone? Or hanging in there?
Sometimes I like my quiet time.

A body pillow, or long pillow, is great to sleep with. I love mine.
Many times it ends up on the floor but there's usually a bathroom trip in the middle of the night
so I grab it then. Cant imagine falling asleep without it now that I'm used to it.

I hope your weekend is all you want it to be!

 

[An54]

@Layla , Thanks for asking. I am doing fine being at home on my own. I guess I am in week 7 post-op now. I'm not up to that much, just puttering around home. I do believe my limp is disappearing, when walking around home anyway. I shall test drive the limpless walk on the sidewalk today when I go out.

I have the sewing machine set up and am finally trying to get some projects done. Apparently a couple of months ago I promised to sew a friend a 1920s style dress. Before surgery I was trying to keep myself distracted by starting or planning all sorts of projects... things to do pre- and post-op, sewing, writing, graphic design, geneaology research and make a family history photo book for my cousin, and/or print-on-demand self-publishing projects, and so on. But many of these projects need sustained application which I wasn't up for in the first weeks after surgery. It's so easy and restful to get sucked down the internet hole simply reading news, or browsing real estate listings, or wherever internet surfing takes you. Or watching series on Netflix. So much for the post-surgical project of whipping off the great Canadian novel, haha. Anyway, I can use the sewing machine comfortably. I find leaning over the table to cut out and pin fabric can be hard on the back, so I take long breaks. It's a puttering around sewing project. I'm not working from a pattern, but trying to do my own thing. For sewists out there, I started with the basic concept of Mary Picken's 1924 One Hour Dress, but am cutting out the whole thing on the bias. I don't have enough fabric to do it without patching sections together, aiming for French seams everywhere. Also fully lined, so I end up making two dresses. I have a dressmaker's form. Sadly the fabric is a rather crappy rayon, not a luxurious burn-out silk/velvet that I would prefer, but it was supplied by my friend.

Not much news to report from the boys at sea. I get a short text every day rather than the long descriptive shlog (ship's log blog) I was hoping for . This is the latest, received about 8:30 this morning

September 01, clear and warm heading to catch the ebb into Campbell River

One summer several years ago I did not hear anything from the sailors for about a week, and I got quite nervous by day five of silence. I talked myself back into calm by day seven, and indeed it turned out they had been far up an inlet somewhere, out of signal range. (except for marine radio, which I did not want to use unless for emergency.)

I'm going to aim for a longer walk outside today as I've been doing the resting-puttering-at-home thing for three days now. Will see how much I still need the walking poles. Maybe I'll get out to a live music event again and do a bit of standing-on-the-spot dancing. There is a pub venue not far from where I live that has dance parties every Saturday and Sunday aimed at the 50 plus crowd --and get these 50+ hours--4:30 to 8pm ! Yes, go out dancing, and you can still be in bed by 9pm! That's where I get the odd dance with 100 year old John who attends every week.
Enough babbling and enough fluff. How are others?

 

[Layla]

Sounds like you have an over abundance of things to occupy your time.
I know what you mean about getting sucked into the internet. I found myself doing the same in the early weeks of recovery. I enjoyed browsing Houzz because I didn't have to think anything more than, I like that or I don't like that, lol. I couldn't absorb much of anything I read early on so I resorted to looking at pictures while I toddled around like a toddler. I would have enjoyed the Google trips you've brought up. I cruised the Canal in Venice and found it really interesting! I'm up for more when I have time. Usually when I'm not doing this, my iPad is OFF.
Don't forget we're here if you get lonely. Hope you have a great day!
@An54

 

[SurreyGirl]

Love the idea of that dance club. Similarly the Great English Novel didn’t get written either. Maybe I should aim for a short story... btw, totally binge watching “The Crown”.... now halfway through series 2.

 

[Alitm]

@An54 Hope you are enjoying a little of this gorgeous weather we are having. The dance club for 50+ sounds like fun! Just my speed Too bad you aren't receiving anything very descriptive from the Men at Sea. Did you get a final destination out of them as yet? Are they still heading north or on their way back down?
I am looking forward to binging on Net Flicks. I'm sure nothing much will hold my attention! Did you see "The Crown" that @SurreyGirl is viewing at the moment?! I had a marathon watching that during one of my hubby's trips to see his Mum.
Your dressmaking sounds great. I'm really bad at long term projects (thus my worries about rehab!) and am always in awe of folks who have the patience and skill for dressmaking etc. Secretly I wish I could do it, that's all!!
My hubby comes back a week last night. I've been training the young horse to go in the trailer all week, and finally took him to my friends barn in Saanich this morning. That is one more thing off the list of things to do.
Please let me know about your experience with the walking poles, when you are not sewing Did you use crutches? At our joint class, the PT went over the Red Cross requisition form and only wanted us to get the walker with two wheels and slides, and a cane in terms of assisted walking devises. I did not think to ask about the crutches as I had so much going through my mind!!
Thinking of you across the strait

 

[Mojo333]

Wishing you a good week @An54

 

[An54]

Well it is my 7 week hippieversary today. I'm still spending most of my time puttering around home. I did go out yesterday in the evening, met a couple of friends downtown, and we went to an 'Irish pub' with live music, and then onto a piano bar. I take the walking poles with me when I go out, in case I tire or walk too far. I'm quite tired today, so I think the day of activity followed by a day of rest will continue for now.

I'm still sewing. The first couple of days were hard on my back, and I had to stop every half hour with killer back pain which was quickly resolved after a few moments' rest. I think my core muscles got out of shape resting so hard for so long after surgery. However, it just took a couple of days to strengthen up enough to keep going now for much of the day. So I may have declared I am doing no 'exercise', but in fact many ordinary tasks and projects--like bending over a table or sewing machine are kind of exercises in themselves.

@Alitm , I didn't end up using the crutches much, just two or three times during the first month when I went out and was still quite weak and wobbly. At home I used the walker for about a month or so after surgery, then from one day to the next stopped using anything around home, and started using walking poles when I went outside. I used the walking poles last week when I walked about four blocks up the hill behind my place, and I was glad to have those poles! I was really tired. But on the flat I would use just one pole now when I leave home.

Not too much else to report. Still waiting to hear again from the sailor boys. Haven't heard a peep since Monday morning.

 

[Layla]

Happy Seven Week Anniversary!
You're doing recovery right. Listening to your body when it needs rest after activity.
I hope you're enjoying the week. Thanks for the update. Always nice to hear from you.
@An54

 

[1stSurgery]

Hey....Where is @An54? MIA? Schlogging with Captain O Captain?! Maybe hovering over a sewing machine?

Yay for 1920s bias cut dresses w/ French seams! Boo for crappy rayon!! Charmeuese is perfect for bias cut 20s! I have a friend who's a designer whom I had do my wedding dress in a gorgeous white charmeuse,( it appears the iPad does not recognize the word) with French lace sleeves. Small off topic story about that follows, and I will find a way to tie into hips, promise....

This woman can make patterns by just looking at another designers dress. So we went out upscale shopping and I found a stunning Vera Wang dress, tried it on, and in the dressing room ...she pulled out her little notepad and sketched quickly, in between the high pressure saleswoman coming in (I kept sending her away to get me something else!) And we ended up with an amazing Vera Wang dress for about 1/10th the cost!

And....how that ties into hips is..... Um....well... yes, ok, had never really been on any diet before but was on the Atkins diet then, because, well, charmeuse shows every bump that should not be a bump so I thought I'd streamline right before --I kept losing weight on it every week, so the poor seamstress had to continue with fittings and alterations every few days. (Who knew eating all that bacon and butter would make you drop so much weight?!) So she had to make it smaller in the HIPS (<---see?!) every week, so it wouldn't be baggy around the HIPS! That was of course when I had 2 nice smooth, ripe, round, happy femoral heads and did not limp. Ahhh, the good old days!



Hope you're continuIng your healing every day and dancing again!

 

[Mojo333]

Hope all is continuing to go onward and upward, @An54 !

 

[1stSurgery]

OH wow, I just noticed I posted the "Where is @An54" post at the same time she was checking in with a 7 week report and I never even saw it! We must have cross posted and I missed the update until now.

Glad you got out to the Irish pub and went up the hill! Best I've achieved on hills was a small slope like dirt hill to the lake last weekend. Hills are Hard! I live on top of one and the only going up or down that one will be in a car for now. Hope you hear from the sailors soon. Take care @An54, and keep resting as needed! (As we used to recommend in the venerable old halls of the club that shall not be named, the one that advocates caution and rest post surgery!)

 

[Alitm]

@An54 Happy seven weeks hippieversary! Congratulations! Live music Irish pubs and piano bars make for a good evening!

Thank you for the feedback on time spent on walker and use of walking poles. DH thinks I should get the walking poles when appropriate in my rehab. I am at a loss as to where to walk post op, once I break out of the house! The old driveway from the house to the barn (where else would I go?!) is flat, but is an old gravel road that we have "let go" so to speak, in that we don't top up with gravel. However, it is still not even, but a "path" I travel immeasurable times a day pre-op. Don't know if that counts post op! There is a outdoor sports complex here in Duncan with a track, but I'm sure they won't want someone on a walker or with walk poles walking on it.

It seems as if a busy day followed by a rest day seems to be a common theme to avoid the ODIC gremlins that lurk here and there.

It would be appreciated I'm sure if those sailor boys checked in soon! Get Schlogging DH of @An54!

Good for you with your continued projects

Take care and hope you get schlogged soon!

@1stSurgery I had such a giggle at your post about you wedding dress and how you tied the story into HIPS!

 

[Bionic]

Hi @An54
Happy 7th week anniversary. It was my 8th week anniversary yesterday.
Sounds like you are managing well while your man is roaming the high seas.

I bought some walking poles before my op but haven't used them yet. Perhaps it's time to get them out. I am sure they would give me more street cred than my crutch does.

@1stSurgery
Loved the story about the Vera Wang dress, and your talk of bacon, Mmmm, I think that's what I am going to have for breakfast.

 

[SurreyGirl]

I find that people and cyclists on the Downs Link tend to be more considerate if I am on crutches. With the Lekis they just assume I am hiking and can move out of the way quickly (I can’t)

 

[An54]

Thank you for the congratulations on my 7 week milestone. I seem to be doing okay, apart from carrying around an extra ten pounds of tapioca pudding on my torso. It's rather disconcerting. I'm afraid to weigh myself, and have decided to wait another few months or so before getting back on the scales .

I almost got to the pool yesterday, but managed to delay it in favour of REST again, because I didn't feel energetic enough after a bad night's sleep. However I slept well last night, so may go as far as thinking about going to the pool, which should put my body on alert. I feel confident that Tapico Torso will start burning calories more efficiently at the very thought of swimming, such is brain and body intertwined.

When I was out yesterday I used one walking pole. It seems to me the using a walking pole or cane almost encourages you to walk in a lopsided way ; I feel that I walked in a more balanced fashion when I am without a pole or stick/cane. However when outside, getting on trains or buses, I feel better with a walking pole because others see it and give me the space I still need, because at 7.5 weeks out I'm still not as strong and steady as I need to be to balance on a jerking train, negotiate rush hour, or bolt across busy intersections.

I would be enjoying my alone time here much more if I heard from sailor boys on a daily basis. It's only after I know they are safe and haven't foundered that I can fully relax into the luxury of Me Time. I have the sewing machine out, I take over the whole dining table, and the floor becomes littered with my scraps. Dishes pile up in the kitchen. I let everything household go, and enjoy messy play/creative time with no worries (apart from boys at sea). Last I heard--two days ago--they were in Lund. The rain has set in. Perhaps they are hunkered down somewhere.

So many hours sewing has me becoming disgruntled with my sewing machine. Okay, it was a pretty inexpensive machine. But it is so loud, clattering and clunking laboriously along, stitch after stitch, sounding so very early mechanical; you almost expect to look up and see a donkey turning a treadmill or something.

One beneficial result of the sewing is that the standing/leaning over/cutting/ pinning etc has been good for my back muscles. Next phase is ease into more movement at the pool, and eventually lose the belly padding. I do believe in the Rest Cure--but at the end of the day I want to be fit and my normal weight. The acid test is, after six months (or a year?) to be able to fit into my clothes, take long walks, and to be able to do the 8-count rock step on the dance floor on and off the whole evening.

Hope all my fellow hippys are having fine weekends.

@Mojo333 @Layla @1stSurgery @Alitm @Bionic @ Surreygirl

 

[SurreyGirl]

“Tapico Torso”... love it!

I too dream of returning to swimming. My leg was so bad pre op I could hardly kick it at all so looking for an improvement there.

I have a suitcase of one size down holiday clothes and 4 months to lose enough weight to get into them. My hubby is used to seeing me crying in the bed with clothes I cannot get into scattered about but I REFUSED to throw them away. If I get to a size 18 uk by January I will be a happy bunny.

Will you be going back on Atkins!? Let us know how you get on. My husband makes delicious homemade bread so I have to be careful..

Good luck An54 !

 

[Bionic]

@An54 @SurreyGirl
I need to loose weight too. At the beginning of the year I was doing ok with Slimming World plus dancing, Pilates, aqua spinning ( bike spinning in the pool). The hip pain stopped me doing all of my exercise and I lost interest n SW.
The result of the op and inactivity plus feel good chocolates means I have to start over. Things aren't as bad as they might be but I have gone up a dress size and feel very uncomfortable. Just need to get some motivation back.

 

[An54]

@Bionic , I hear you! I too have gone up a dress size. At least. I have been sewing a dress for a friend. I did not make note of her dimensions. I also re-drafted the whole pattern because I wanted to cut it out on the bias so it would 'flow' and be more flattering ... or at least as flattering as it could get being of a garish flowered rayon. I'm not a miracle worker. I sized it for myself, thinking my friend and I were similar. However I used my Old Me dimensions, much to the shocked horror of the eyeballs belonging to New Me. (when I tried it on) New Me must be encouraged to morph into Even Newer Me; objective: Lose 15 pounds--or rather, 15 pounds of fat. Build muscle. Get down to where I fit into my "skinny clothes" (presently labeled as such, and stowed away on very top shelves)

 

[Alitm]

@An54 and all....So sorry the sailors have NOT been in touch. I recall my Mum waiting to hear from my Dad...back in the '60's and '70's, when he'd sailed a rather small boat from Bermuda to Antigua where it stayed for six months of the year. Then he'd sail back back up to the eastern seaboard and then sail back down to Bda! He worked around hurricane season, but still.....crazy! I think he had a VHF radio or less in those days. It was all celestial navigation too! Yikes. I'm not sure how she actually heard from him as she didn't have a VHF in the house?! I paid Dad back and gave him a few grey hairs when I shipped from Massachusetts in the back of a six horse horse trailer, with three horses, all the way down to Port Elizabeth NJ and hopped a freighter with one said horse, and away we sailed to Bermuda! I was a bit wild and crazy at twenty-one, and it was before 9/11, so the security on the docks was a little more lax. Hope my silly stories give you some diversion from your concerns.
The weather has changed and it is raining here as well. Had to google map Lund! I digress from hips......

With the walking poles, when I've seen people using them, they use two. Isn't that supposed to help with getting the strides evenly matched, so to speak, and help with rhythm and pace? Of course I know not what I speak of, so I may be way off base here Perhaps they are a lot to carry when getting on a bus etc.? I thought (and have no idea really!) that they weren't so much for weight bearing, but more for the gains mentioned above! I'm so uncoordinated these days it will be a miracle if I can get the walker going correctly! To be able to stride out again must be such a wonderful feeling!

Tapioca torso....despite still doing some floor exercises, but going down one less horse to care for in the barn (shipped him last Monday) has caused me to think I've gained weight already and I haven't had surgery yet! I'm sure the pool walking will really help you. Are you cleared to actually swim? What is holding you back from getting in? Are you worried about over doing it, or would you just prefer to wait until DH is back?
I dread to think what will happen to my mid-section in the next few months. It makes me so depressed how out of shape I already am. I believe you will be doing a lot more at six months than you think. You have taken things sensibly slow and easy, but have worked on building up the walking. You are a model hippie, and will get the big pay off in the end...and will be back in your dance size wardrobe soon I'm sure

Schlog sailors schlog please! Thinking of you


P.S. I need your and @1stSurgery's creativity for a healing-side thread name! I'm not coming up with much...unlike me, but there we go! I'm coming up with things some what equine, and trying to build in "gift" into it, and nothing flows!

 

[An54]

@Alitm , what adventures you have had! I hope you have written about them (or will do so). The things we do before we think too much about them, which in later years slows us down so much, especially if we have annoying hips. I set off travelling at age 19, and ended up going through Iran, Afghanistan, through Khyber Pass, etc. It seems like a million years ago. But overland travel doesn't appeal to me much any more. I would
rather put my feet up at the 1960s era Tropicana in PV! I would have sneered 30 years ago.

Yes, definitely two poles is the way to go. Two poles, or no poles. But they occupy your hands. And they are annoying when you stop, shop, in cafe, etc, often falling on the floor. But that could be my own clumsiness and lack of experience. I often wear a small backpack when out, in case I end up grocery shopping. I walk everywhere, or take transit--an urban life.

I have assigned myself a self-directed self-detox regime for a few days: drink real, 'high-test' cranberry juice, the real thing, not that 2% sugar pop that is passed off as cranberry juice or cran-apple juice. This stuff is undrinkable full strength--for me, anyway. I water it waay down. Trying to hydrate.

I heard from the sailors. They are in Pender Harbour. The rain is really coming down right now. Strong winds forecast over the weekend, so they will hunker down there. Happily there is a nice marina, pub and facilities. I know of two appreciative sailors who will be having hot showers and a pub-cooked meal tonight.