BluepoofBikes Motorcycle Adventures

March progress report

Hey look, another month.

Last we left your intrepid motorcyclist/hockey player, things weren't going so well.  Fortunately life has improved a titch since then, so here's your update.

What's Going On?

Most of the nerve pain I had last month is gone.  I went to the doc and got another 6-day Medrol pack, which is the best shit ever, I kid you not.  I hate taking steroids generally, but these make my back pain go away within 24 hours.  No side effects other than blurry vision when I wear my contacts.

The sciatica hasn't completely gone away, but it's more of a subtle tingling now instead of feeling like I was walking on thumbtacks.  I can live with that.

So now I'm pretty much down to muscular pain, which is still pretty bad, but is far preferable to nerve pain.  In addition to the actual back muscles, I have some muscular pain in the glutes and legs, which is confusing because it feels almost exactly like the muscle aches I'd get from a weekend hockey tournament.  Only, y'know, without doing anything but sitting on the couch.  But I can pretend I've been running marathons, so at least I still have a rich fantasy life going on.

What I Can Do:

I'm back at work now, so that's good.  I had taken two weeks off of driving in to work, and instead hung out at my makeshift home office for 11 working days.  

While I was out, I had an electronic sit-stand desk installed in my cube, so while I'm at work, I can hit a button and switch from sitting to standing and back again.  It's pretty nice and has made me able to continue working full time in the office now.  It looks pretty much exactly like this.

Sitting and standing are both pretty painful after I hit a threshold, but the threshold is up to about 30 minutes again.  I can go longer if I'm sitting somewhere comfortable.

Walking is still OK as long as I'm not carrying much...

I can carry things under about 5 pounds without too much trouble.  My work laptop is 5.5. lbs and I'm still having a lot of pain carrying it around to meeting rooms...fortunately my boss approved a MacBook Air for me, which I eagerly anticipate.

I'm back to doing stretching daily and some light PT work...more on PT in a moment.

Sleeping/lying down continue to be no trouble at all.

What I Can't Do:

The biggest annoying thing, other than the work laptop, is not being able to carry a purse around.  I keep everything in my purse (which is why it weighs 2398479238 lbs and therefore why I can't carry it).  I've just been carrying a credit card and my driver's license in my pocket, which has taken some getting used to.

That's pretty much it -- I'm phasing other things back in, in moderation, but nothing else is strictly off the list.

What I'm Doing About It:

Let's see, I already mentioned the methylprednisolone pack.  I finished that up last Sunday and have been doing pretty well ever since.

I did see my doctor again and I have a follow up appointment on April 5.  He was bummed for me that I'd had a flare-up but wasn't concerned about it from a medical point of view.  

I'm going to a different physical therapy place, where there's a person who my doctor specifically recommended for disc problems.  I've been twice now and it seems to be pretty good.  I had one flare up at my last appointment where doing an exercise gave me stabbing back pain, but fortunately heat and e-stim calmed that down quickly and it didn't recur.

For daily home PT, I have five stretches (hamstring, piriformis, quads, calfs, hip flexor) and three exercises (abdominal brace, calf raises, and a plank-like core move modified for the gimpy). 

I'm almost completely off of ice now and onto heat, which cheers me up considerably because I'm generally always cold.   Unless I'm at work, I'm sitting on an electric heating pad for my glute muscles, I always have the heated car seat cranked up to "maximum", and I'm taking a lot of warm baths with epsom salts.  

I ordered a Zero Gravity chair from Relax the Back which was just delivered this morning.  I haven't had a chance to sit in it yet, since I've been at work, but I'll report back.

I'm also trying to get back into weekly massages at the Apple Fitness Center.  My massage person there is also a physical therapist, so she's been great at helping the muscle pain.

So, that's my update for March.  I'm in a much better mental state than I was a couple of weeks ago, though it's still generally frustrating that this has been going on for nearly seven months now.  Oh well, everyone has been very up front with me that these injuries generally take a year to 18 months to heal, so I suppose I shouldn't expect to be a medical miracle. :)

Mid-February progress report

Well, bad news, kiddos.  We're back to another bad phase in the back recovery.  I feel like all I post is negative stuff but I want to keep documenting this.  Plus, Caralee wanted more details, and since Caralee is my back pain twin, her wish is my command.

I don't even know what happened, per se -- ever since I pushed the bike out of the garage, I guess the swelling just hasn't gone down.  It started getting better slowly and then, for no discernible reason, last week it got much worse again.  Sigh.

What It Feels Like

Have you ever needed a root canal?  It feels like that -- the deep, blue flashing nerve pain, right in my spine. 

The muscles from my glutes all the way up to my neck are tight and stiff.

The disc swelling has caused sciatica in my glutes and going down my left leg.  Today it's just a minor burning/tingling, but sometimes it feels like I'm being poked with thumbtacks, especially on the bottom of my left foot.  No weakness in the leg as far as I can tell, though -- it feels weak, but I haven't stumbled and the leg supports my weight just fine.

What I Can Do

I can sit at my makeshift home office desk for about 15 to 20 minutes at a time.

I can stand up for about 20 minutes at a time.

I can walk -- stiffly, but almost upright -- provided I'm not carrying anything.  I haven't walked any further than from my car to inside, and I'm not really jumping at the bit to try.

I can sleep and lie down with no trouble.

Sitting on the living room couch seems most comfortable, so I've been doing a lot of watching TV and working on cross-stitching.  I can sit on the couch for about a half hour at a stretch.

What I Can't Do

Sit, at all, at my desk at work.  This is sub-optimal.  I went in to work yesterday morning and, within an hour, couldn't see straight because of the pain.  I managed to keep my shit together until I talked to my boss, then drove home and cried for about an hour straight.  

I can't carry anything.  Maybe a piece of paper.  My laptop is right out -- carrying my purse from the car to my cube yesterday was also a huge problem.

PT exercises are a no no at the moment, too.  I'm doing the stretches twice a day, since it seems to help the sciatica (more on that in a second) but the muscle exercises hurt too much.

What I'm Doing About it

Lots of ice.  I've been doing roughly 10 minutes on, 50 minutes off since Friday morning.  Basically, I lie down on one of those freezer gel packs that goes from my glutes to my mid back.  I try to put my legs up on the couch arm because it pushes my low back down a little and gets it onto the ice.

Twice a day, I sit on a heating pad for 10 minutes to warm up my glutes/hips.  Then I do my hip/glute stretches, then ice again.

I'm working from home this week so that I can do the icepacks and not have to sit longer than 20 minutes at a time.  

Oh, daily ibuprofen, too.

I have an appointment with the back doc on Monday -- the soonest I could get in.  He's going to push for an injection again.  I'm not sure what I'm going to say about it; I really don't think that they help.  I would take the oral steroid again though.

Blah blah blah.  So that's that.

February progress report

Hi kids, and welcome to my monthly fascinating progress report.  I realize these are boring as heck and not awesome ride reports from Utah or Australia or whatever, but it does help me to look back and see improvement from month to month.

Motorcycles

There's good and bad news from the motorcycle world this month.  The good news is that the motorcycle posture doesn't seem to cause too many problems.  The bad news is that the weight of the motorcycle does.

I've been trying to alternate which bike I ride each month (my rides are about once a month these days) so that both bikes get a little bit of love.  Last month was the XT, and that ride went really well, so I decided to take the Beemer our last weekend.  

My biggest mistake was in pushing the bike out of the garage myself.  The actual riding went just fine (6 mile round trip) but...well, let's just say that I sound pretty stupid when I admit "I pushed a 450 lb motorcycle backwards out of the garage and then did a multi-point turn to get it facing the right way."  

So that was a minor setback that I've been paying for ever since.  It's a bit encouraging in a backwards sort of way, though, because noticing the sacral pain/shooting pain down my legs/tingling feet means that I don't have them day-to-day anymore.  So that's good, at least.

What I've learned: Stick to the XT for the foreseeable future (less weight means easier on the back) and for god's sake, have Peter move the motorcycle around.

Hockey

I think I went to public skate once in January.  I don't really have an update per se; it's pretty much the same as it was last month.  Skating itself is OK but stopping is tough: I can do about four hockey stops in a 15-minute period.

Transitions are also still pretty hard; I can skate forward or backwards without a lot of trouble but switching between them is sketchy.

Stickwork is still impossible; I've tried holding a stick with a tennis ball in the living room and the bent-over posture is a no-go.  I'll try again later this month and see if there's any improvement.

Physical therapy

PT is still going well, when I haven't hurt myself pushing motorcycles around. ;)

I'm still doing the same stretches and exercises, plus I've added in a modified cobra stretch:

Considering that some days, just lying flat on my stomach with my back muscles relaxed is an accomplishment, my goal is to get up on my elbows like the little dude above.

Most days I can get up partially on my forearms and can stay there for a couple of minutes (the key to this stretch is to keep the low back relaxed; its natural tendency these days is to cramp up like mad if I try to do any kind of back bend).  As of my PT session today, I'm now also supposed to add in 10 small presses per day -- basically little pushups in the position above.   

I still do 10 face-down leg lifts (10 each leg). I can do 3 per leg in a row now without having to reset my core muscles.  They're still difficult, but doing 3 in a row is now about as hard as doing 2 at a time was last month.

10 leg extensions is about the same as the leg lifts. I do 3 in a row now, which is a huge improvement over last month.

Finally, I've been cleared to start the recumbent bicycle again, which is exciting because that means I can work on cardio eventually.  It's depressing how quickly my cardio system weakened; I get winded going up too many stairs or walking too quickly.  I'm hoping next week I can start going to the Apple fitness center for 10 minute stints on the recumbent bike (I have to wait til the current motorcycle-pushing inflammation goes down).

Random daily stuff

Still no problems sleeping.  

Walking is still almost 100% back to normal.  I can carry lightweight things short distances now -- for example, I can now carry my laptop to another building for a meeting. Little victories!  Peter and I went to the Computer History Museum last weekend, though, and the hour-long tour was too much walking for me.  I was in quite a bit of pain by the end of it.

Sitting is still the worst.  I'm about at the same point as last month: about 40 minutes is OK, but more than that brings on the stiff/burny/crampy.  I'm having the ergonomic people at work install a standing station in my new cube so that I can alternate sitting and standing at my desk.

Standing is OK, I can stand for almost an entire hockey game (while I'm coaching) now.

The muscular pain is much better now.  Aside from my current flare-up, I've had very little.

Doctors and meds

I saw the doctor in mid-January; he was very happy with my progress!  He's no longer pushing the injections and I see him next in May.  I'll remove this section from next month's report since I don't anticipate having any more doctor or medication updates.

13-mile ride on the XT

See, I told you it wouldn't be long before I had a motorcycle update.  Ye of little faith.

Today was warm and sunny (ha ha, East Coasters) and my back was feeling decent, so Peter and I decided to go to lunch and run an errand on the bikes.  

Since we're not exactly racking up the miles lately, our game plan has been to rotate through the bikes so that no one bike sits for a completely unrealistic amount of time.  My last ride (in early December) was on the Beemer, so today I took the XT, which last saw daylight at the end of September.

Peter was going to take the DRZ, for similar reasons, but the battery was utterly toast.  Oops.  Peter now has 2 out of 3 bikes with completely dead-as-doornails batteries, which tells me the boy needs to ride more, hrm? So he took his one remaining bike, the V-Strom that he recently bought from Tony.  Um, did I mention that Peter bought Tony's V-Strom?  If not, there you go.  

About 20 seconds after leaving our driveway, the XT ran out of gas halfway down the hill.  For the 99% of you who have never been to our house, we live on a one-lane twisty hillside road.  So it was exciting for me (and more so for Peter, who was following me, and even more so for the car that was tailgating him) to suddenly sputter to a stop around a blind hairpin.  My bad!  I wasn't expecting that as the bike only had 80 miles to the tank, but apparently I had forgotten about the 192832398 times I'd just let it idle in the driveway for 10 minutes at a time.

At the gas station, I looked back through my records (I use Gas Cubby for the iPhone) and learned I'd last filled up the XT on April 4, 2009.  Sigh.

Anyway, we rode to Jersey Joe's for lunch and then on to Jo Ann Fabrics, where I needed to pick up some embroidery needles.  Yes, I do needlepoint.  What the hell else can I do while sitting on the couch?  Stupid back injury.

OK, I look like a dork and the sun is in my eyes, but at least you have proof that I rode my motorcycle somewhere!

Overall, it was a great experience.  The whole ride wound up being just about 13 miles, which is now officially my longest ride since June (watch out, Iron Butt members).  

I had some stiffness in my back, but nothing terrible, and only a bit of the glute burning that I've come to associate with overextending myself. There was a bit of sacral pain at the very end of the ride, but I was happy to specifically notice it as that means most of my life is now sacral pain-free, which is a marked improvement from a month or two ago.

So, not sure when I'll next ride again, but I'm happy to report that this ride -- however tiny -- was still successful.

January progress report

I've made Real Actual Progress during the month of December, so this update will be a bit more positive. ;)

Motorcycles

No update on the motorcycles; I haven't ridden since early December.  I was hoping to ride this week sometime as I had the week off from work, but other plans and weather got in the way.

Today Peter and I had plans to ride into town for lunch, but my back is a bit crampy and it's cold/foggy outside so I'm being a princess and postponing the ride.  

I'll post a separate update to the blog next time I ride...it shouldn't be too long. Really!

Hockey

Huge update here -- I'm back on the ice!!  During my vacation week, I went to two public skate sessions at Ice Oasis and did about 15 minutes of skating at each one.

Forward skating is going very well; no issues at all (remember, we're talking 15 minutes max here, not exactly game level yet).  Ditto backwards skating, though I can only do that for a couple of minutes at a time and I can't transition between forward/backwards at all yet.

No idea why I'm looking down here, but at least I've got a tiny bit of speed going and am practicing crossovers.

 

Speaking of crossovers, those are also pretty easy for me to do.  Clockwise is harder on the back than counterclockwise but that's my tougher side even when I'm at 100%, so no real surprise there.

Doing CCW crossovers:

 

Finally, I spent some time working on skating with my knees bent while (mostly) not bending forward at the waist.  This is really hard for me (even pre-injury) because my hip flexors are really tight and jacked up.  But I did a few laps like this, engaging the core, and I think it'll get easier.

 

Stopping is still pretty rough.  I can do about four stops per public skate; more than that and the back complains.  I can stop on one side OK and the other side is painful....but for the life of me I don't remember which side it is.  Ha ha, dork.

I think the hardest thing about skating now is putting my skates on.  Bending over to tighten them hurt like a mofo and I finally had to ask Peter to lace me up.  Ah well!

Physical therapy

PT is going well.  I had a minor setback in December when we realized that one of my PT exercises was aggravating the sciatic nerve and was causing burning pain down my leg an hour or so after doing the exercise.  But we got it figured out and now I don't do the pelvic bridges anymore.  The other two exercises, and all of the stretches, seem OK.

I still do 10 face-down leg lifts (10 each leg). I can do 2 per leg in a row now without having to reset my core muscles.  They're still difficult, but doing 2 in a row is now about as hard as doing one at a time was last month.

10 leg extensions is about the same as the leg lifts. I do 2 in a row now, which is a huge improvement over last month.

I do one exercise per day, plus stretching.  Not very interesting, but doing that prevents the burning glute pain that I'd had in November.

Random daily stuff

Still no problems sleeping.  

Walking is almost 100% back to normal, for short distances.  I still have trouble carrying things, but I almost never walk hunched over anymore.

Sitting is probably the worst now.  Last month I was OK for about a half hour; now I'm maybe up to 40 minutes or so, but I still get very stiff/burny/crampy if I sit too much.  A heating pad helps.

Standing is OK, I can go about a half hour.

I have a lot of muscular pain, all the way up and down my back.  I need to get a massage.

Doctors and meds

No doctor visit since the last update; I see him in mid-January.  I'll report back then.

No meds other than ibuprofen when I get stiff and crampy.  2 200mg ibuprofen seem to do the job pretty well and I'm not even taking that every day (though I did take some before each public skate).

December progress report

Well, it's been a month since I last posted and I'm starting to feel like I don't make any actual progress on anything that I enjoy doing.  So I'm going to do monthly status updates so that I can look back and hopefully not want to stick my head in the garbage disposal.

Motorcycles

I can now ride the XT for about 10 miles, or ride the Beemer for about 3 miles.  I took the latter to the ATM and the bank on Friday afternoon -- the first time I've ridden it since June and the first time I've tried out the Rox bar risers and Wunderlich Vario levers.  I also had the Rick Mayer saddle raised a little bit (!!) to take some pressure off of my shoulders.   So far these ergonomic changes seem to help, though 3 miles isn't exactly an arduous test.

After my ride on Friday, my back felt very stiff, but there wasn't a lot of pain per se.  I spent the afternoon with a heating pack on, which helped; I did have pain going to bed that night, but it was back to normal (for my current definition of normal) the next morning.

Note that there's no way I could ride two days in a row yet.  I'd like to try to ride again on New Year's Day (for the symbolic element); that'll be exactly four weeks from my last ride, so it should be OK. Fingers crossed!

Hockey

No skating yet.  Before last night's game, I did stand by the door to the boards with someone's stick and hit 4 or 5 pucks (with decent lift, too!).  I stopped as this became painful pretty quickly.

I think I'm going to try using my wooden stick indoors with a tennis ball, though.   I'll clear it with my physical therapist, but I think this would be OK.

Physical therapy

I've started PT again since my last update.   It's still pretty painful after a PT appointment.  The exercises themselves are going OK; not a lot of pain, but they take an embarrassing amount of effort.

Today I did 10 face-down leg lifts (10 each leg) and I was sweating and cursing by the end of them.  Illustrated here by a small child, who is neither cursing nor sweating.  I'm fairly certain a 90-year-old grandmother would have an easier time of these than I do.

 

10 leg extensions took forever and it was very difficult to keep my core engaged.  More sweating and cursing.  I can't find any photos online, but it's essentially lying down with my knees bent (like the guy below), extending one leg out straight, and then returning to the starting position.  Then swap legs.

Doing 10 hip extensions were somewhat easier.  I can get my hips raised about halfway as far as this randomly shirtless dude.

 

I go to the gym usually three times per week.  After doing the gym (usually 20 minutes of recumbent bicycle, followed by the above and stretching), I'm pretty stiff but no pain.  Lots of glute burn (in the nervous system sense, not the rippling muscle sense) for the rest of the day.

Random daily stuff

Very little trouble sleeping, thank goodness.  

Walking has good days and bad days -- generally I can do a normal amount of walking around at work without trouble.  I still have to drive to the gym because I can't carry the gym bag that far (maybe 2 city blocks).

Sitting at work is pretty problematic.  I do OK for about a half hour and then start to get stiff and burny.  

Standing is still the worst, I think.  I can stand up for 10 or 15 minutes without pain and after a half hour, things get pretty bad.  

Doctors and meds

I saw the doctor again last week and he seems fairly pleased with my progress (glad someone is!).  I'm back on another 6-day stint of methylprednisolone, which helps a lot despite making my vision blurry.

I see the doc again next month to see how the steroids and 6 weeks of PT is helping.

So, that's life.  Hopefully the January update will have me moving around a bit more! 

Yeah, still not riding.

This is my excuse:

 

Remember that back injury I talked about in September?  Turns out it's a ruptured disc.  Well, I feel better about being a whiny little brat about it now.

I went in to see the doc today and he put the above picture up on the screen, turned to me, and said, "well, I bet you can find the problem!"  Heh, yep.  He also said that the bright white parts that are right up against the vertebrae (inside the blue circle) are actually supposed to be inside the disc.  Eeeewww.  I told him I had a shock absorber leak, which got a chuckle out of him.

The good news is that I shouldn't need surgery and the doc says most ruptured discs go away on their own within 6 months.  

I can resume normal activity as pain permits -- unfortunately, pain isn't permitting riding yet (hockey is of course also right out) but I was glad to hear that the injury is "stable", meaning that if I do try to ride a little or go to a public skate, worst case is that it hurts.  I'm not going to make it worse, per se.

So...yeah.  I refused the epidural steroid injection the doc wanted me to get (since my last one didn't go so well) but I did agree to the 5-day stint on methylprednisolone.  I see the doc again in a month and we'll go from there.  With any luck it'll be healing and I'll either be back in physical therapy or otherwise well on my way to recovery. 

RIP Buell

I find this news incredibly sad.  I don't know anything about Buell's finances, or the politics of how it was assimilated into -- and ultimately killed by -- Harley-Davidson, but it's never a good thing for the sport when a company goes under.

I'll admit it, I choked up watching the above video.  

Maybe some of it is my Wisconsin background; maybe some of it is seeing a man who so clearly loves his work and his company have to give its eulogy.  

Buell brought so many things to the sportsbike world; I remember bike show displays that proudly showed off the perimeter floating brake disc, the frame holding fuel, the swingarm holding oil.   Like the Buell Blast or not, it got 70mpg -- that's better than my XT!

I've ridden a Buell Blast around Wisconsin, a Firebolt XB12R and a Lightning XB12SCG around a track in Nevada, and I've toured with Firebolts and Ulysses.

Rarr, now I've spent minutes of my life trying to find the photos of me at Femmoto riding the Firebolt.  I'll upload one later if I find it.

In the meantime, here are my other Buell photos.  I never owned one, but I liked riding them.  I'm sorry to see them go...and it'll be interesting to see what, if anything, this does to Harley.  I think their reason of "needing to focus on the Harley brand" is a bit coy; can you think of a brand less in danger of being forgotten than Harley-Davidson? Ah well, I guess this is why I'm not in PR/marketing.

What's this? A motorcycle ride??

Your eyes do not deceive you! I went on -- drum roll -- a motorcycle ride today!!

OK, don't get that excited; it was about 7 miles long.  But it was the first time I'd been on a bike since June, so I was still grinning in my helmet the whole time.

All ready and rarin' to go!

It was a gorgeous day, if a little warm. 

The heat made the views of San Francisco a little hazy.

I stumbled upon Vista Park and decided to stop and look around.

It turned out to be a neat little city park, a pilot site for a native plant/pesticide free park.  They have a little landscaping area set up with examples of native plants and a little info about each one.

Behind the landscaping area is a trailhead.  Looks inviting, huh!

I took the opportunity to sit in the shade for a few moments partway along the trail.  I didn't see any of the aforementioned wildlife; only the native beer bottles and discarded trash that people seem to feel appropriate to dump in parks.  Grrr.

I'm pretty sure "hiking in motorcycle gear on a 95F day" isn't one of my PT-approved activities, so I turned around and walked back to the bike.

The round trip was only about 7 miles, but it was riding!  It felt great to ride the XT -- though I'm not entirely sure the new clutch lever I put on was disengaging the clutch completely -- and I'm looking forward to more tiny trips.  :)

A hot pair of twins at work

A nice pair of F800GSs parked outside of work today.  Gorgeous!

The one on the right is a 2009 owned by my buddy Guido.   The lefthand one is a 2010 in a really nice coppery orange color.  It looks red in the cell phone photo, so here's an official-like BMW pic:

I approve!  I'm biased because I just love orange, but this is really a fantastic color.  BMW made the F650GS in the same orange for '10 as well:

I still like my red one...good thing, huh, since I own it and its paid for and stuff.

But that orange F800GS is really wonderful.  I'm happy that I'll get to look at it outside of work from now on. :)