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).