Recovery V

Welp. I'm approaching the 6 month mark. That is surreal. I swear, that within like a minute of realizing that I had broken my ankle I had a very logical progression in my mind for how the rescue/recovery would play out: I would somehow find my way down back to civilization and the ER or a clinic. I wasn't sure EXACTLY how that would happen. Like specifically, if I would be carted off the mountain, or maybe I'd have to crawl a bit to a helicopter, or what. But it was clear to me I would make my way down. Then I figured I'd be evaluated at a hospital, possibly casted. I certainly wasn't sure I needed surgery immediately, but later that night more or less realized that I would after the X-ray. In fairness, I had no real idea how I'd make it home, and was indeed a bit shocked to hear I'd have to drive, but knew I would get there. Then I knew it would be weeks of being crutch bound. Relying on friends. Having a new maybe even somewhat.... "fun"??? experience? Whatever, I'd make it through it. Things would go back to normal. I wasn't really that worried at all.

And now it's almost 6 months and I wonder if I WILL make it through. And if things WILL go back to normal. Well, at times I do. And at other times I do see things getting more back to normal. At least pre-Covid normal. Reality vs. expectations I suppose?

First, some good news. I was able to run for 5 minutes on Tuesday. Officially, five repeats of one minute jogging followed by one minute of walking, but that first time I was actually cleared to jog. I was not feeling like celebrating for reasons I'll go into later, but it was clear progress. 

And I've put this off for a good 5 or 6 weeks, so just picking it back up again finally. And to be honest it might take a few more restarts to get through.

But yeah, the first run. The first run on Tuesday February 23. And the hell with it, I'm just going to add a wee bit of context. I had started to see a woman. We began dating the first week of December, but hadn't really started spending time together regularly until January. And in general this had been great. She was awesome: down to earth, pretty, hard working. And really spending time with her filled in a lot of the emptiness and quiet time in my life. She accompanied me up my progressive Mission Peak hikes twice. We did old-fashioney date stuff like mini-golf and drive in theaters. I thought I had finally found that silver lining in covid, the accident, the recovery, etc. She seemed to be okay that I was a run of the mill engineer who worked to live, not a hard core FAANGer. And she seemed to be okay that I was still recovering. Of course physically, but yeah also emotionally from the depression I had dealt with. I would tell her, "I don't need ANYTHING from you, it's not your job to fix me, but I really appreciate the company." 

Unfortunately, not everyone really understands how depression works, and that seemed to be the case with her. For me the recovery has always been ups and downs. I somehow manage to hit a sweet spot and really put things back together, start to get back in the swing of life, and then often out of nowhere something will bite me and send me back down. Anyway, we decided to stop seeing each other.

And my group faced a highly unfortunate round of layoffs. Fortunately, no one I worked with closely, but I was on edge. 

I went in for my normal PT that Tuesday, pretty much frazzled. I figured I would just keep going through the session because sometimes that's what you need to do. And I did. Then at the end, Ron looked at me, and pretty non-chalantly said, "Matt why don't you get on the treadmill, 1 min on jogging, 1 min walking, 5 times." I thought to myself, "Ron, do you not KNOW how huge of a deal this is to me?" But I got back on. I ran. I was emotional. Not really the overcome with emotions Michael Jordan crying meme emotional, but I felt it. There was a positive to a pretty horrific week.

I ran again that week. On the treadmill. I was progressing. Eventually, I was given clearance to run outside on my own. And I did. March 5. I ran for 10 minutes. The following Friday I ran for 20 minutes. I really felt like finally I had started to see my recovery taking full shape. My runs were far from fast. But I felt that same accomplishment. That same relief. That same relaxation at least to some degree I had been missing SO much for the past 6 months. That okay I can come home, have myself a nice recovery chocolate milk, and enjoy some TV relaxation. 

In between those two runs, I had checked in to the Stanford Orthopedic Clinic for my final, six month, check up. March 10. It was smooth. X-rays were taken, and still showed an excellent healing. I was pretty much in and out of the clinic in maybe five minutes. I did not feel like celebrating though. I still felt so much uncertainty. My uncertainty was exacerbated by my PT session when Ron told me I would only need to come in one time a week. 

I had been a "professional" patient for six months. And slowly it was time to try to enter the "normal" world again, somehow. I did not feel ready at all.

But, I had slowly begun to run again, even if in very limited amounts.