Living With a Stress Fracture

When I was first diagnosed with my fracture a few weeks ago - I had these grand plans on how I would document my recovery and use the opportunity to pull through it stronger than ever.  What I didn't count on was the sheer amount of pain I would be in as soon as I stopped running.

Funny, eh?  You'd think I'd be in LESS pain after I stopped running on it.  Not so.  By the end of week 2, I was not only going insane from the sitting still so much - I was still biking whenever I could handle it but my normally very active life was ground to a halt.  I mean - just my Fitbit steps went from 10,000-15,000/day to around 5000/day on average.  Some of it might account for the days that I have been using my crutches around the house.  Pretty hard to take as many steps when you can cover twice as much ground on those.

Add to all of this that I may be having the single most rotten, horrible month of all time. It has taken a bit hit to my mental health as I just do not handle things well when I don't run.  I've had a fair few days of the mean reds and I don't like having the mean reds unless I am significantly into a marathon.

Then - I had a bit of a breakthrough. I was playing peekaboo through the bathroom door with Buggie and was trying to dart out of view before she could see more than a glimpse of me.  Then she headed for the door and instinct took over...and I ran about 5 steps by accident.

Holy excruciating, Batman!  

But then my leg felt really cold and then all of the pain lifted.  I got to spend almost the whole week hubby was away pain-free.  It gave me so much hope.

This weekend, however, I overdid it a bit and my leg was tender last night.  Hubby blames the fact that I carried his suitcase up the stairs while he fixed driveway gate when we got home. I blame my trying to fix the gate myself at least twice before we left to get him (damn Langdon winds and 300lb gate).  Then, after a pretty much sleepless night , I had to get two grumpy kids ready to go this morning and one of them was major tantruming. I was trying hard to keep my patience and I ended up stomping my foot in frustration.  And then falling over in tears from the pain.

It's like two steps forward, twenty steps back.  I'm tired of the anger and the tears and the frustration and the pain and...and...and...GAH!

But this morning - I decided to check my horoscope.  I don't usually do that because I don't really care but I have been feeling like I am just a giant, grumpy griper lately and I need some external hope since people are sick of dealing with me these days.  And this is what it said:

You're too hard on yourself, Scorpio. If things haven't gone exactly as planned over the last few days, there's no sense in berating yourself over it. As long as you did the best that you could, what's the problem? It's likely you've experienced a delay and not a cancellation. All signs indicate that your goals will come to fruition even though it might take longer than you'd anticipated.

Well, if that ain't hope - I'm not sure what it is.  

So, I pick myself back up and accept that I must keep moving forward and I must keep finding ways to cope and I must find myself through all of this.  I need to redefine my goals for myself to make sure I come back smarter and stronger.  I need to channel my frustrations constructively and I need to accept that this is the body I have RIGHT NOW.  I'm going to need to live in it - I just need to find a way to maintain my sanity while I do so.  And I need to come to terms with the fact that my timelines mean nothing now...it is all on my body's ability to heal before I can move forward at the speed I want to.