Tag: injury

Dancing · injury

The Ankle Bone’s Connected to the Knee Bone, and the Knee Bone’s Connected to the Hip Bone…

Diane Harper1 Comment

I have written here and here about my persistent ankle injury. I finally got to see a doctor specializing in sports medicine, and she says my issue isn’t just a tight Achilles tendon. It’s that my whole leg is weak.

She sent me to a new physiotherapist for shock wave therapy to address the thickened tendon and recommended more exercises to strengthen my leg and glute muscle. The physiotherapist added more.

I am also trying a sleep sock for plantar fasciitis and have gel heel lifts for my shoes.

It has all been a reminder that as the old children’s song goes, all my body parts are connected, from the soles of my feet through my ankle, Achilles tendon, calf, hamstring and up into my glute and lower back.

The exercises are not fun, but I’m doing them faithfully because they are working. This week I managed two swim practices without taping my ankle. I even had a successful ballet class; I’m starting to get back my range of motion and I am getting strong enough to crank out a few pirouettes.

Not me doing pirouettes obviously. I would be thrilled even to do even one double pirouette.
Nat’s doing her best Lucky Cat impression
Physiotherapy · Sat with Nat

Nat’s doing her best Lucky Cat impression

natalieh (she/her)Leave a comment

My latest physiotherapy move is designed to help my shoulder stay seated in place.

Emily demonstrated the move, arm out sideways and bent at the elbow up. Gripping a tension band rotate the hand down, parallel to the ground and back up.

“Oh it’s like the waving cat statues!”

A white cat waves at you

“Yes!” Emily grinned “A Lucky Cat!”

It’s a classic silly little move that hones in on a weakness. I could only do 4 reps and completed the remainder without tension.

I’m grateful for more days pain free. I’m glad I’m seeing progress. It’s very slow but definitely happening.

Strength has returned to my left hand. The nerve pain has retreated to my shoulder. I have a buffet of simple exercises I use to keep the healing on track.

If I’m very lucky I’ll be able to have a full range of motion in 2026.

fitness

Acting my age – at least when it comes to exercise? Probably not.

Diane Harper1 Comment

I recently came across this article in the Guardian on fitness routines by age, shortly before suffering an overuse injury that had me incapacitated for a couple of weeks.

I don’t actually hate my middle-aged body. I do hate the misuse of “ladies” though – it should be “lady’s”.

I’m glad it’s just a super tight soleus muscle and not a torn Achilles tendon or hamstring injury. But I’m still not impressed with myself for needing to use a cane for several days. As much as I like my physiotherapist and appreciate her getting me on the road to recovery, I would have been happy not to see her and need to have KT tape all over my ankle.

I will do my best to take my training a little easier, at least for now. And I have already started taking a Pilates class so I can work on improving my strength.

I know exactly what triggered the injury, and what made it so much worse a couple of days later. But will I stop doing dance or lifeguarding (which includes mandatory fitness training)? Not a chance.

Sat with Nat

Nat is chasing one petty injury after another

natalieh (she/her)1 Comment

These are not big life altering injuries friends but they are enough to keep me out of the gym. Frustrating.

My right knee had responded to physiotherapy last fall but started acting up again recently.

There is a muscle that runs down my thigh and attaches at the knee. It just decides it’s not firing anymore. Then my knee drifts. I’m back to wall sits with a small ball between my knees to cajole it back into action. Again. This is just an exercise I get to do…forever.

My left elbow tendinitis is responding well to weight training, ultrasound and massage. I’m avoiding knitting but also realized that gardening is not helping. To take pressure off my right knee I’ve been leaning on my left hand. Uh. Owie. The elbow tendons are quite cross with me. GAH!

I’ve a crick in my neck and right shoulder blade from sleeping funny in the car last weekend. Not serious! VERY ANNOYING.

Oh and my Achilles tendons are snap, crackle and popping. Time to replace my walking shoes and dial in my commuter bike fit. And stretch. And do calf raises. And roll my feet.

I’m stretching. I’m doing light dumbbell exercises. I’m waking 5km a day. I’m doing little bicycle jaunts. But. Ow. It’s a bit annoying that there are these moments of sometimes quite intense pain. Mostly it’s dull, nagging aches. I’m working on being patient. It’s not my forte.

Lucy, my red Texas Heeler, stares out our window watching and being patient.

It’s very common to have injuries when using your body. All my active friends have some kind of injury they are recovering from. We are middle aged. We are doing things and our bodies have some feedback to share.

I am committed to staying active and look forward to a summer of cycling, walking and living generally pain free.

Let’s do this!

Creating Ease Isn’t Easy
ADHD · fitness · health · injury · mobility · self care

Creating Ease Isn’t Easy

Christine Hennebury1 Comment

After last week’s conundrums, this Tuesday finds me feeling a lot better overall.

Things are getting a bit easier in my brain and in my muscles and while it’s tempting to jump back into my regular routine, I am determined not to fall into that trap.

Instead, I am working bit by bit on creating more ease for myself in my day to day actions.

And, like the title says, creating ease isn’t easy.

A drawing of the word ‘ease’ against a background of sets of concentric circles that overlap.
This ease was actually fairly easy to create. Image description: a drawing of the word ‘ease.’ Each letter is capitalized and is a different colour (blue, yellow, purple, dark pink) and the background is all kind of overlapping sets of concentric circles.

Creating ease means doing gentle yoga and stretches, breathing deeply, relaxing when and how I can and, it means spending a lot of time and energy paying close attention to how I am moving, how I am sitting, how I work, and how I do a variety of tasks.

My ADHD brain is ok with the first few things but it is not a fan of the latter part of that list – in fact, even the thought of paying that kind of attention to those details is tiring.

But I do want to feel better. And I know that unless I make some adjustments, it’s going to be a) harder for my neck/back/shoulders to heal and b) I’m going to keep having some of the same issues over and over.

Right now, I am working on two things that I hope will prevent me from exacerbating my current issues AND will help me avoid some other issues in the future.

Here are my current practices:

1) Getting up and rolling my shoulders/doing a few neck stretches every 20 minutes or so.

I already like to use the repeat timer app throughout my work day so I have a better sense of time passing AND so I don’t feel like any given task is going to take forever. (I have given myself permission to change tasks whenever the timer goes off)

Now, I don’t just note that time is passing, I use the chime as a reminder to move and stretch. It’s not perfect – I sometimes inadvertently ignore the timer – but I definitely have a higher success rate than I would without it.

2) Practicing holding my head differently when I am drawing, writing, and using my phone.

Since a lot of my leisure time is spent doing one of those activities making this change will really help.

Instead of spending so much time with my head down and my neck jutting forward, I am taking Katy Bowman‘s advice about how to hold my neck:

A video called ‘Hold Your Head Better When Using Screens’ from the Nutritious Movement YouTube channel. The still image shows a woman in a purple shirt standing in profile holding a phone in her right hand and holding her left hand up to the back of her neck.

Since I can’t necessarily put my drawing/reading/writing in the same place I would hold a phone, I am also using the same movement to take breaks during my drawing/reading/writing sessions – here’s a demo in this Facebook video of hers from a few years ago.

Between these two movement elements things, the yoga, the massage therapy, and all of the being-careful-but-not-coddling-myself, I am hoping to keep inching towards more ease in my body – especially the muscles of my neck and upper back.

Creating ease isn’t easy but it will be totally worth the effort, right?

Right?

Right?

(It had better be!)

ADHD · fitness · health · injury

A frustrating mystery solved (I think)

Christine Hennebury5 Comments

Grab a cup of tea and a snack, this post will be long.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here and there on the blog but I’ve been having extra trouble doing things for a while now.

Everything has been just a little harder. I’ve struggled to start things, I’ve struggled to finish things and there have been some tasks that just felt impossible – tasks that would normally be well within my capacity.

Unfortunately, because of the stress of the past few years and because of how ADHD categories things for me, I didn’t realize how much this was happening.

I’ve been struggling with exercise, including Taekwon-do. I’ve been struggling with writing projects and other creative activities. And I have had trouble summoning the energy to do good planning for a lot of different areas of my life.

I had put this all down to various kinds of stress, ambient stress, grief, and the kind of work-juggling stress that comes from a combination of ADHD and having taken on a few too many projects.

Oh, and, of course, the kind of stress that comes from feeling like you have been making too many excuses about too many things for far too long (even though there have been SO MANY OBSTACLES one after the other.)

Recently, though, I have discovered that there may be an underlying cause contributing to my frustrations over the past six months.

I tried to write a post about it several times in the past week, but I couldn’t pull my thoughts together the way I needed to.

So yesterday, on World Creativity and Innovation Day I decided to take a different approach and I made a zine instead.

I actually thought doing a zine would be quicker but as I wrote page 20, I realized that there was no way to make this story short.

I have photos of each page of my zine below and I’ll put a image description with each one, but if that’s all too long to read scroll way down to the bottom and I’ll put a summary of the whole thing.

Got your tea?

Let’s go!

a photo of a zine page
A photo of the cover of a black-and-white zine called Well This Is Frustrating – a scene about an unexpected answer to a mystery by Christine Hennebury
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page with the following text “When you have muscle pain and stress and anxiety and brain fog and extra migraines and low energy and it keeps getting harder and harder to start stuff and to keep doing stuff or to even think about starting or doing stuff” Some of these words have been sort of illustrated. The word brain is huge. The word fog is made in sort of wiggly letters that kind of look like fog and next to extra migraines there is a picture of a person’s head in a vise. There was a black arrow after the word stuff.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page with a drawing of a confused looking robot next to text that reads “it can be really tricky to figure out why?”  Why is written in block letters and running vertically on the page instead of horizontally.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page that features a pill bottle with eyes and a frown, and the word Concerta printed across its middle and it has its little arms crossed. A speech balloon next to it says This isn’t my fault. The text on the page reads “First I wondered ‘Are my ADHD meds failing me?’ That would explain the stress and anxiety and brain fog and the low energy and the trouble getting started…”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page that reads: “but it doesn’t explain why a few minutes of exercise feels like an hour. And it doesn’t explain the muscle pain, especially in my neck and shoulders, and usually my ADHD fights me on getting started, it doesn’t usually prevent me from carrying on, so maybe it’s…” in brackets at the bottom of the page more text reads “I’m 52. Can you guess what is on the next page?”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page that reads “perimenopause” in big letters and right underneath it says “or even full on menopause?” On the bottom left is a black-and-white witch’s cauldron with bubbles and steam rising from it, and the cauldron is labeled “(peri)menopause may contain brain fog, anxiety, muscle aches, mood issues, low energy, and more!” Next to the caldron is text that reads “I thought: OK maybe but it doesn’t exactly fit. It doesn’t feel quite right.”
a photo of a zine page
Black-and-white text that reads “You know what? The worst of it wasn’t even the symptoms. It was how I had been gradually (and unbeknownst to me) narrowing my life to deal with them.” At the bottom of the page are four speech balloons: 1st speech balloon says – I don’t want to write about that. It takes too much energy. 2nd speech balloon says – Maybe I’ll feel up to that next week. 3rd speech balloon – OK Khalee, maybe we’ll take a shorter walk today. 4th speech balloon – I don’t know if I’ll go. I feel tired just thinking about it.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page with text reading: “I adjusted my meds. I got lots of rest. I reduced my stress as much as possible. I tried taking teeny steps toward more exercise, but still, I found myself here”  There’s an arrow from the word here that is pointing to a drawing of the top of a person‘s head underneath a stack of boxes that read 1) I just cannot  2) task initiation issues 3) lack of motivation 4)  fatigue 5) muscle aches 6) nope 7)  brain fog. The person is saying ‘Glerg’ to all of this.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page that reads “and this all seems like part and parcel of the same big problem from this perspective. But when it was developing, and when I was living it, it kind of snuck up on me. Each piece seemed like a separate issue.” The word big is written in much larger and darker text. And the word separate has each letter in a box sort of like scrabble tiles laid next to each other.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page that reads “I talked to my doctor about some of it, and I did some research on my own about other stuff and I kept meaning to call my chiropractor, but I kept forgetting.” The word Dr is wearing a stethoscope. There is a picture of a computer and some books next to the research sentence, and at the bottom of the page is a drawing of a person with their face enveloped in a cloud that says brain fog and there’s a speech balloon that says “what was I going to do?”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page that reads  “But then an idea arrived from an unexpected source. Last time I was at the hairdresser, she mentioned that my scalp was hard as a rock. I said.  ‘Must be stress, I guess’ but it made me think if my scalp is so tight, what else is not working right?” And in brackets at the bottom, it says “good question hey?”  On the upper left on the page there’s a very rough drawing of a hairdresser washing someone’s hair and there’s a note beneath that says “Please note that Hillary is not a ragamuffin. I don’t have the skills to draw her well.”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page that says “and then I started having trouble with my neck. A knot on the right side kept recurring so I called a massage therapist. I mean, this was a specific issue that could be treated in a specific way. This was what is known in the field as a good idea.” In the middle of this page is a small drawing of a person‘s chin, mouth, and neck and there’s a large black spot on the right side of the neck.  Notes next to the picture read “a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile”, and “in real life, I have hair and features.” At the bottom right of the page next to the word good idea is a light bulb.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page that says, “and it was a good idea. During my massage, Renee said something like “You know, you have the tightest neck. One of the tightest I’ve ever massaged.  My other clients with this tight of a neck have a constant headache.” At the bottom of the page in darker letters is text reading “Wait! Could a tight neck be part of the big problem?”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page with dark text that reads: “I asked her some questions and then did some research about the checklist of things she mentioned.” In the middle of the page (enclosed in a box) is a checklist that reads “tight neck, tight shoulders, ribs tight enough to restrict breathing, tight jaw” and each item is checked off. Beneath the checklist is text reading “and yep! All of those things can add up to brain fog, fatigue, mood issues, lack of motivation, low energy and increased migraine/headaches/muscle aches…”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page with large text at the top that reads “Maybe it’s ADHD….Maybe it’s menopause…Or maybe it’s neck and back related?” Smaller text below reads “That certainly would explain a lot. Sure, ADHD. perimenopause, and stress could be doing their part but maybe, just maybe, the underlying issue was more directly treatable? I love this for me. I mean it’s still a challenge, but it’s way more straightforward.”

a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page with large takes to the top that says “But wait! There’s more!” And then smaller text reads. “I was telling all this to my friend Cathy via text when she asked a key question.” In a Speech balloon is the text “So it’s all due to stress? You didn’t have an injury did you?” In larger text it reads “I went to say all stress and then I remembered one afternoon last October…”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black and white zine page with text reading: “I was lying in my circle swing in the backyard when CRACK the branch it was hanging on broke and down came baby (Me!) cradle (i.e. swing) and all. The branch landed on my hands and I landed on the ground.” The word crack is printed in big letters and there’s a crack running through each one – a little space between the top and the bottom of each letter. At the bottom of the page is a very rough drawing of what supposed to be a circle swing on the ground with me lying on it, holding a branch aloft.
a photo of a zine page
A black-and-white photo of text reading “I was shocked and I hurt, but not ‘specific injury’ and not ‘something’s broken’ hurt. It was more of a jangled nerves and ‘I feel jammed together’ situation. I checked for symptoms of concussion, but you know what I did didn’t check for?”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page with a whip drawn at the top and the word WHIPLASH in large black letters. Smaller text reads “Now, I haven’t seen my doctor yet but can you guess what happens when you don’t treat whiplash right away? Yep, brain fog, breathing issues, muscle pain, anxiety, mood issues, low energy, motivation, troubles, headaches.” Text in brackets at the bottom reads: “You get the idea.”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page that reads “And you know what else happened a while ago? I fell on the steps and kind of caught myself. So I definitely added to the whiplash or whatever happened as the result of my fall.” Larger text at the bottom reads “And the effects of those two unpleasant but largely unremarkable incidents have been compounding for months.” Note: The words “I fell on the steps” are written as if they are a set of steps with a landing in the center.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white zine page with text reading “All of the yoga, all of the stretching, all of the bits and pieces of exercises? I couldn’t actually make progress with them, couldn’t get them to a new level. All of that effort was actually going towards keeping things from getting worse.” The word progress and the word level are written larger than everything else on the page for emphasis.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of a black-and-white page with text reading “And I had no idea. Yes, I knew about my frustration. I knew about my symptoms, but I couldn’t see the big picture.” The word frustration and the word symptoms are both written larger than the surrounding text and the words big picture are written very large and much darker than the other text and they’re surrounded by a rectangle almost like a picture frame.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of black-and-white text that reads “I didn’t realize that I had been limiting myself avoiding things that aggravated my injuries. I noticed that I ‘wasn’t trying hard enough’ and I was fighting the urge to be critical of myself about it.” All of that text is in large black letters, not capitals, but with emphasis. At the bottom of the page there is some text in lighter strokes that is in brackets and it reads” ‘You aren’t trying hard enough’ was my unmedicated brain’s favourite refrain. It still hurts to think it.”
a photo of a zine page
A photo of black-and-white text that reads: “And now I’m realizing that there was an underlying issue, something causing all the symptoms, something preventing me from trying hard enough. It reminds me of when I first found out I have ADHD I feel both sad (for the lost time) and hopeful for the future, but I have a question that haunts me.
a photo of a zine page
A photo of black-and-white text that is all in dark, emphasized letters: “What would’ve happened to me, to my life, to my ability to do the things I like doing, if I hadn’t figured this out?”

So, yeah, that’s where I am right now – trying to be kind to myself, trying not to aggravate my injury further, trying to stretch and rest, and working with my massage therapist (yay, Renee!) to help my neck, shoulders, and upper body figure out how to relax again.

Summary: After months of having a rough time with my physical and mental health, a visit to a massage therapist helped me realize that I may have injured myself more than I realized when I fell in October and then fell again back in January. I may have been dealing with untreated whiplash that has just been compounding over time. Whether or not it’s whiplash, I have been dealing with ongoing neck, shoulder, upper back and rib issues that have actually been physically preventing me from operating in my usual way and at my usual capacity. And I feel rather sad and frustrated about how long it took me to figure out what was going on.

injury · swimming

Sometimes Doing Less Really Is More

Diane Harper

In the ongoing struggle to address my Shoulder issues (which now stretch well down into my hip and thigh), I have a new physiotherapist. My old one was great, but has gone on maternity leave.

My old therapist had given me a whole lot of exercises over our time together. I hate them. They work, and my shoulder is significantly better than it was six months ago, but it would probably be even better if I did them more regularly.

My new physiotherapist says the only good exercises are the ones I’ll actually do. She has given me exactly two, plus using a ball to roll my hip against a wall. One feels very much like doing butterfly stroke, which is perfect. It’s an exercise I can connect with my love of swimming. The other is a leg lift at a slightly different angle than I am used to, so familiar but also a challenge.

Do I do them all every day? No. But I am making a serious effort to do at least some of them every day. They are stinking hard and when I do them all, I go to bed exhausted. Even this limited work is helping enough that I am able to swim more often and I’m gradually able to do longer distances using freestyle.

Top: the peaceful little lake where I swim most often these days. Ignore the time. Strava on my phone is terrible for time but accurate on distance in the water. Bottom: Willow the dog gets a kayak ride. She also understands the value of doing less.
Maybe: In the Washing Machine of Life
fitness

Maybe: In the Washing Machine of Life

Mina2 Comments

Last month I wrote about healing rollercoasters. I had planned to write something less turbulent this month. Instead, I’ve gone from rollercoaster to washing machine.

As I write this, over the holiday weekend in Canada, I am surrounded by the Rockies in Canmore, Alberta. I’ve been looking forward to this sojourn for months. The gift of looking up from my computer to see mountains outside my window. And to get out on the trails every day, to trail run, hike and mountain bike.

My fourth day, finishing up a run, I sprained my ankle. Badly. I watched it swell as I hobbled home crying, as if my ankle was being inflated by a bike pump. The physical pain was eclipsed by my mental anguish. Really? Was I going to be imprisoned inside, when just out my door there were miles and miles of forested mountain trails?

What was the universe trying to tell me? What message was I supposed to receive?

I was devastated. Here I am, trying to rebuild my life and instead of three weeks of heavenly nature immersion, I was going to have three weeks of psychic torture and physical pain. Here’s the first message I received: You, Mina, are a detestable person who deserves to be knocked down, repeatedly. Your ongoing, excruciating divorce is not enough. Nor is your financial precariousness, nor the Addison’s Disease. You have still not been punished enough. Yes, even as I was hearing this particular voice in my head, I was fully aware that whether or not I was going to engage with this psychic torture was in my control. Or at least theoretically. It’s easy to say that our state of mind is a decision we make. It’s harder to actually exercise that control.

I have been trying hard to control my mental condition. And for those of you who have read previous posts from me, you know that I was already fully immersed in an effort to visualize my future health (I am actively exploring the potential to heal my Addison’s Disease with a functional medicine practitioner). In that context, injuring my ankle felt like the universe just being plain mean. Understanding that the universe is not personal was my first bit of mental jujitsu. This is not a punishment. I was trail running. And as my friend Kim reminded me, ankles get twisted. This did not happen because I am a bad person. I realigned expectations.

I put flat pedals on my mountain bike and imagined riding around very gently on the flattest ground I could find with the hard plastic sprain boot on my foot. I have some experience with sprained ankles. I’ve also broken my foot, cracked ribs and done quite a number of other things to myself. So, I’m familiar with the healing trajectories.  I was calm. Or resigned. It’s sometimes hard to discern the difference. I knew what to expect. A lot of streaming Pilates at home. A sore hip from wearing the hard boot, which makes one leg longer than the other. Enforced stillness. Restlessness.

At the same time, I redeployed the Gladiator Therapeutics far infrared wave device I’d been using to heal my adrenals, and am now wearing it night and day around my ankle. While I have no idea if it’s actually working for my adrenals, I know it’s been working for my ankle.  How? Because, as incredibly swollen, ugly and wildly-colored my whole foot is, including my toes and my lower leg, I have experienced little pain. Certainly, there’s discomfort when I walk, especially down stairs. My ankle is stiff when I get up from sitting or lying down. And, I can walk on it, progressively more each day. It’s only been 9 days, as I write this and I went out for a 30-minute walk today (wearing flip flops). And I can ride my bike. On anything. Wearing a small ankle compression support and regular running shoes.

On my bike with the Three Sisters in the background. Inspect before riding sign, which made me laugh and was also accurate. And a surprisingly gentle section of the Rundle Riverside Trail.

I have never experienced ankle healing this quickly before. So, now what is the universe trying to tell me? What message am I to receive?  

I feel like I’m living in a washing machine, being savagely bounced around from one emotion to another. I am realigning expectations almost daily.

At this very moment, I am not hiking in British Columbia with my work colleague and friend, Michelle, who I’d planned to meet in person for the first time this holiday weekend. I was so excited to be with her. Michelle was going to drive from Nelson, B.C and we were to meet up in the middle, in Invermere. Instead, I’m alone in Canmore, nursing the enormous disappointment of not connecting with her. And then the washing machine flips me around, and I’m simultaneously ridiculously grateful for the grace of being able to mountain bike and get outside in the mountains, when I thought that would be impossible. Every turn of the pedal, every technical trail section I walk my bike, every mud puddle I splash through, I’m filled to the brim with the sheer unexpected pleasure of communing with nature.

Daily, I spin through a cycle of emotions, from devastation to elation and back again. I keep hoping to be rinsed clean, to spin into stillness, to be hung out to dry in a gentle mountain breeze. I am searching for meaning in what’s happened, for a story of why.   I wonder, is the universe offering me evidence that I can heal? To shore up my faith for the steeper climb to health I’m facing with the Addison’s? Or is the message more straightforward, simple—be grateful for what you can do, it’s not nothing, in fact, it’s a lot of something pretty joyful.

Maybe that’s the story. Or maybe not.

Michelle, my Nelson friend, reminded me of this Taoist story: An old farmer’s horse ran away, so the farmer could not tend his crops. His neighbor said, how awful, to which the farmer replied, maybe. The next day the horse returned, with three wild horses. What good fortune, the neighbor said. Maybe, the farmer replied. The following day, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses and was thrown off, breaking his leg. What misfortune, the chatty neighbor said. The farmer replied, as always, maybe. Not long after, war broke out and the army came around to the villages to draft the eligible young men. Not the farmer’s son, who was healing from his broken leg. The neighbor, always quick with his take on any situation, said, well aren’t you lucky. Guess what the farmer replied … Maybe.

The story isn’t over. There’s no clear message. Maybe. In the meantime, I can try to minimize the frustration and be grateful for my body’s (or is it my mind’s?) capacity to heal and move.

fitness

Ouch! Knee Pain and Staying Active

amandalynnstubley3 Comments

Well, I have sad news this month. I hurt my knee, and it is no fun. Turns out hurt knees hurt!

I actually hurt my knee back in April, in the tiniest turn to the right while walking – so tiny that when I demonstrated the turn to my doctor, she didn’t see it – she said, “when are you going to turn?” But my knee sure knew I had turned.

So, the past 8 weeks or so, I have been doing very little walking. It was just getting back to feeling better, and last week I stepped with determination at the end of loading up my car for a camping trip and ouch!

I hurt this knee 25 years ago while cycling in Toronto, and I have a large double scar across my kneecap – my personal souvenir of Toronto’s famous streetcar tracks. So I always call it my ‘good knee’ since it’s been so good to me after the injury. But I have a suspicion something is amiss inside that knee, as the pain comes and goes…

So now I’ve booked in for that x-ray I didn’t get around to after the first hurt. And I’m trying to identify ways I can stay even mildly active while I deal with… whatever this is.

Sam has been an inspiration in many ways to me (see posts here and here, for example) not the least of which the way she stayed active through waiting for and then having two knee replacements! Fun fact – her surgeon is my surgeon, because in about the same time frame I’ve had two hip repairs.

Photo of woman smiling at camera on a sidewalk, in front of the marquee sign for the Chicago Theatre
You can’t see it, but I survived a very fun trip to Chicago last month by using a cane everywhere I went. So helpful!

As someone who’s lived with hip pain for years, it’s been a shock to realize how unprotected our knee joints are – they’re just out there bending in any direction our muscles let them go. 

I’m still working a very intense (and fascinating!) business job and my project of work-life balance is ongoing… but I can’t walk too far right now.

Do you have some advice on staying active with limited mobility? I’m needing it! Do you have a great, non-weight bearing yoga routine you can point me to? I’d love to hear it.

Let me know, because I think I’m in this for a while.

Thanks!

fitness

Building Strength in My Shoulders and Back – What?

Diane Harper

I have been dealing with a shoulder issue since at least this spring . At one point in September it was full-on frozen shoulder (or something that looks like it, since I don’t have a formal diagnosis). How could this be? My shoulders are super strong from all the swimming I do.

Since then, it has improved a bit but I still feel as weak as a newborn kitten after a short swim session. Really short, as in 400M or so, not even my usual warmup distance.

Dapne, my physiotherapist, has been helping me recover mobility for months now. She gave me some strengthening exercises that I mostly ignored for two reasons:

1) the stretching exercises seemed more important; and

2) I’m a swimmer who relies heavily on arms, shoulders and back to move through the water. I can swim for hours, and barely kick. How can I possibly need to strengthen those muscles?

This week she delivered the same message again, along with new exercises using a resistance band. I had to try them while she watched, instead of just looking at the little videos at home. Huh! I really do need to strengthen those muscles! That was hard work.

This has all been an interesting learning process. I know a few swimmers who have had shoulder problems but they were faster/worked harder than me. My assumption about my risk of similar injury was completely wrong because frozen shoulder does not appear to be triggered by exercise; whatever they suffered from was likely something different.

I also learned how great it is to have a good physiotherapist. I first went to physio about four years ago, after breaking the other arm. That was necessary and therefore acceptable. However, I struggled to believe that I “deserved” to see someone to help me address less specific mobility and strength issues. Physiotherapists are for athletes. Wait – I’m an athlete, albeit an older one.

Now I’m learning the importance of doing all the exercises I am given, so I can go from sad little Karen Gorney arms to a full John Travolta stretch. I looked it up – there are actually Saturday Night Fever shoulder exercises, and one of them is one I have been assigned.

Saturday Night Fever photo courtesy of Everett Collection

I’m going to have to reset priorities in order to fit them in. And I’m going to hate it. They are boring, as well as hard. But I am unstoppable and I want to get back to doing things I love.

A green cartoon T Rex dinosaur appears to be roaring while holding up to grabbing sticks that will allow it to reach things normally out of reach. Above it, in black capital letters, is the word UNSTOPPABLE.
An unstoppable dinosaur is ready to go plogging with Martha, despite its obvious arm issues.

Diane Harper lives and swims in Ottawa.