Getting Back To Normal

Slowly but surely, things are getting back to normal.  It's taken longer than I would have thought.  But I'm also an impatient person who enjoyed living in a world where I thought that it would be no big deal to start walking again after breaking both legs and spending two months in a wheelchair.  Ahhhh, denial.  Sometimes it's a beautiful thing!

Next month marks the one year post accident time point and I'm trying (at least some of the time) to be kind to myself on my progress.  I'm trying to keep in mind that everything will come as it will and it's certainly not like the dogs are judging me.  Well, Miley is a little, but whatever. 

Throughout this process of relearning how to walk, I have refused to do really any sort of heeling with the dogs.  Even on a good day, my gait was uneven and walking a straight line for very long was beyond me.  I LOVE heeling.  Having this hiccup make a mockery of that was incredibly unappealing.  Not to mention, it just felt counterproductive for the dogs to have me periodically bumping into them through no fault of their own.  So heeling was on hold.  Fine, we'll start smaller-ish.

The physical therapy team that I have had throughout this process has been phenomenal!  They've kept my at home and at the gym routines constantly evolving.  And they were always trying new things during my sessions.  They basically didn't allow me to get board.  Which, in the lengthy process that I had ahead of me, that was pretty key to keeping me plugging away.

Earlier this year, my primary PT asked me what kind of physical goals I had for the year.  I touched on a few different areas of interest where I felt I could set tangible goals that would give me something to look forward to.  One of those areas was getting back into the conformation ring with Dominic.  My PT didn't show dogs, so she wasn't entirely sure what would be entailed in this.  I gave her a general run down and she started thinking out loud.  It might be beneficial to have me bring Dom in to the clinic so that she could see me work with him and get an idea of 1) how I move when I've got him on the other end of the lead and 2) what I need to be able to work up to.  She ended up getting approval from the director of the clinic and they verified that the patients who would be over lapping with me weren't allergic to dogs, and we were off! 

It was one of the BEST sessions I had had!  Hitting specific measurement milestones were huge, but knowing that I was REALLY working towards getting back ALL aspects of my life was beyond words!  Part of me was a little worried that she was going to recommend against me taking Dom into the ring, but after our session with him, I got the green light!!

Fast forward to now. :) After many weeks of plugging away, being persistent and consistent regardless of how awkward I felt, tomorrow Dom and I will be getting back into the conformation ring!  We're only entered tomorrow for the double specialty, but I'm really excited to get back into the ring with him.  It's going to be awkward and I know that I'm going to be self conscious about it, but it's working those bits of normalcy back into my life that I need.  And it's also about damn time.

So here's to getting back into the conformation ring and here's to making an effort to blog semi-regularly again!

And Things

Yeah, wagon, falling off....but hey, at least I didn't end up in the hospital again. ;) Recovering from this accident has been a thing.  Many things actually.  I wrote my last post last August with the intent of the blog posts helping me to work through everything and using the blog as the outlet that it frequently has been.  It still is, but jeez, the accident and subsequent recovery have been such an involved and lengthy process, that getting "caught up" on everything has happened would be quite the task.  And life got busy and involved with me getting back to work and life slowly picking up speed.  Oh yeah, and appointments.  Dear god there were so many appointments!  I'll attempt to summarize, so that this aspect of my life can get more back to "normal."

After the hospital, I spent two months in a wheelchair and was completely non weight bearing on either leg.  As in absolutely, no-go, not happening, even if I had wanted to try cheating, that shit was NOT gonna happen.  While you're in a wheelchair, you realize just how un-differently abled the world is.  And quite frankly, just how inconsiderate the general population is.  By all means, even though I'm the one in the wheelchair that really can't go onto the grass, yes, let ME get out of YOUR way on the sidewalk so as to not inconvenience your day.  Until you're in a situation where you experience these things first hand, you don't realize how crappy situations can be or just how crappy those situations and people's responses can make a person feel.  

But I digress, two months in a wheelchair basically hanging out at home.  Basically all of my muscles had atrophied, so even if I had wanted to attempt going out of my house, I have a slanted drive way and was not strong enough (I know, I tried, under supervision) to halt my wheelchair from skidding down the drive way into the street, let alone wheeling my way back up that previously insignificant seeming incline.  Not being able to leave the house unsupervised wasn't the worst thing.  I had a LOT of healing to do.  And because I'd had a couple bouts of my appetite and ability to eat going out the window while I was in the hospital (head trauma is a serious bitch), I hadn't been really fueling my body as much as it needed for the crazy amount of all over trauma it experienced.  So small activities, even just having conversations, wore me completely out.  I could interact with people for a MAX of two hours before I was basically falling asleep where ever I was.  My endurance for focusing my eyes and my brain on reading or typing anything was also shot.  The physical therapist in the hospital actually had me doing eye exercises.  In a nut shell, I was easily exhausted and spent a lot of time sleeping and generally recovering.  

During this time, Miley was my constant companion.  We started nicknaming her Nurse Miley.  Because I wasn't very strong and my legs were so sensitive and not mobile, we had to be really careful about how close she got to me.  Any of her previous rough housing or even some of the snuggling that she would do with me were out of the question.  She had a hard time initially, but she adjusted and she was content to be as close to me as she could.  She was also a HUGE fan of the fact that my bathroom door had to be taken completely off in order for my wheel chair to fit in there.  Miley LOVES to creep on me while I'm in the bathroom.  She'll nose punch the door handle multiple times.  And if that doesn't work, she very loudly inhales along the edges of the door.  With the door no longer in her way, she was able to see everything that happened in the bathroom and basically keep a constant eye on me.  She would even lay down in front of the bathroom door while I showered.  It was all very sweet and through the whole process she was very careful to modify any of her physical interactions with me.  She was incredibly gentle and calm.  Now, of course, she's completely back to her normal crazy self. :)

Throughout the wheelchair period, I understandably couldn't wait to be weight bearing and walking again.  I had a this INCREDIBLY unrealistic thought process that once I was weight bearing, I would just start walking and within a month everything would be back to normal.  Yeah.  That was cute.  Though I will admit that this wonderful ignorance is likely what kept me in a much more forward thinking mindset than I would have otherwise been in.  I basically had to learn to use everything from the waist down all over again.  In some cases I had to form new neuro-muscular pathways for the different ways that my legs were now moving.  Plus there was a whole lot of muscle imbalances.  And atrophy.  And hardware in both legs.  And my favorite, limited range of motion in my right knee (almost a year later and there is still 20 degrees that I don't have).  Relearning to walk is hard and painfully slow.  You know how long it takes kids to go from crawling to walking and walking fluidly?  I know very much understand that struggle.

As I mentioned, we're creeping up on the one year anniversary of my accident and I'm at a point where I can look back and be pretty proud of what I've accomplished and everything that I've had to push through and deal with.  It has been a crap load of work and there have definitely been chunks of time where I was having a hard time dealing with everything.  But I'm proud of the progress that I've made, I have a plan for continuing to move forward, and now I can say that I wrassled a car and it didn't beat me. ;) This life event will definitely continue to color things moving forward, but life is getting back to normal and I'm looking forward to getting back to everything with my dogs.

I hope anyone still reading these posts is doing well!