Saturday, September 19, 2009

I am not all better, but sometimes I act like I am ...

I am at 10.5 weeks and just traveled to a nearby state (2-hour plane trip) to referee a skating competition. I carried my own luggage, only used my cane to skip the long security line, and spent 14-hour+ days in a cold ice rink sitting, standing, walking, climbing stairs, carrying things, and (gulp) running. The latter happened when I had an issue during an event and had to get quickly from one side of the arena to the other, and I'll be damned if I was going to let something minor like a little hip surgery blow my event schedule out of the water. No sirree!

When I realized I had broken into a run I sort of toned it down into a race-walking type of thing. It didn't cause any pain although I was stiff at the end of the day but probably would have been anyway. I brought my cane each day and it sat in the corner while I ran the competition. I wore (low) heels the entire time, I might add. I didn't take any pharmaceuticals for pain.

On the last day when I was tired I did use the cane for the last hour, and at least one person said, "is that yours, what is wrong?" When I told them I'd had hip surgery in July I found that most people had not even noticed that I was limping. That did depend on what time of day they saw me of course. A couple of people had noticed and asked what was wrong - and they were people who didn't know me.

I still can't even bend over to touch my toes, and I still can't do very many leg lifts, but I can referee a competition. Hang in there all of you in the early days post PAO. It gets better!

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