Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Snowflake Kertuffle

"It'll take a full year for complete recovery," my surgeon commented and those words echo in my ears, driving me to prove him wrong. I simply don't have a year to fart around while crippled from Achilles tendon surgery and I have been pushing physical therapy to the limits. So, on the 5 month anniversary of my waking up incoherently blabbering to nurses who had dressed me after floating around in la la land during surgery, I felt ready for a true inaugural trail run. 


Throughout recovery, I have been carefully hiking, going to the gym and constantly working on the range of motion of the "repaired" Achilles tendon/heel bone and felt I could get some type of slow cardio burn while on the mountain. I parked and hopped out at the trail head and flashbacked to simply clicking on my play list and disappearing into the wilderness.

 Not today.

Stretching.  It is equivalent to watching grass grow, paint dry or icing an injury. I can hardly stand it.  My A.D.D. kicks in merely thinking about stretching.  But today, I force myself to work the calf/tendon, all the while thinking, "This is such a waste of time..."  Satisfied, I turn up the volume of my dearly missed play list and start out for my trail run.

Just exactly what was I thinking?  A trail run?  Really?  After, oh, maybe a dozen strides (pre-trail and on a level bike path), I feel the 2 anchor points attaching my tendon to the heel bone making themselves known. 

So, this is what Doc what referring to, "Don't be stupid and rip the tendon off the bone and start the whole process over. There's very little blood flow down there and that's why it takes so long to heal."  Fearing the threat of hitting the reset button, I shift into a lower gear and have to downshift a few more times. What an eye-rolling joke. I know any explosive tension from a sprint would wreak havoc, but I thought a steady slow motion would be tolerable.

Trail running always brings an escape, a sense of freedom.  Despite being self-conscious, running shirtless heightens the feeling of unrestricted freedom.  While gimping up the mountain, I take my shirt off hoping to embrace the sun and wind on my skin, but immediately put it back on.  Even when lean and in shape, I was very self conscious and today, holy jiggly beefalo...

Anyhow, it's no trail run.  Heck, it's not even a trail jog, trot, shuffle or speed walk. The surgical repair restricts me to a steady hike, scouring for mountain bike parts scattered on the trail. Huffing and puffing, I stop my stopwatch and change my timing device to something more appropriate: a calendar, the phases of the moon, the cycle of Halley's comet....  Finally, I summit and skirt the mountaintop to visit my treasured tree.  I took more breaks than highway workers to get there, but I enjoy sitting under the tree, it's important to me. (Click here for a previous post about my special tree.) After my mind clears, I head back down. Oddly, a vulture-looking bird circles above and I wonder if I am really replicating a dying creature he soon hopes to feed upon?

I'm such a kertuffle. What's that you ask?  It's a noun I just made up.  In my little brain it means a person who is young at heart and trapped in an aging body but refuses to accept physical limitations and still pushes the body to revert back to youth. 

"You are no spring chicken," a supervisor recently commented to how my forecasted return to normal work duties is way too soon, preposterously far-fetched.  He added that despite thinking that I'm special, he said we are all snowflakes...each of us individually unique.

Well, I have never felt or acted special.  I think determined, stubborn, focused and relentless are more appropriate. "Special" grabs a connotation of elitism of which I have never embraced.  But, he's absolutely right about the snowflake analogy since we are all unique.

So now, I set my mind to show him and Doc what a snowflake kertuffle can do. 

Stay tuned! (I gotta go ice the tendon...grrr!)



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