After the Fall

I had a fall in December and hurt my back as well as my stronger  hip and leg. I kind of looked like the guy in the caution sign.. twisted at the hip and landing on my own leg and bottom.  I have not missed any work but  I was on modified duties for some time and I have been taking it very easy at home. I also have done a lot of physiotherapy and my recovery has been much slower than expected.  I only have one more appointment covered by insurance and I am nowhere near the place I was before my fall. Dealing with insurance and all the non-recovery parts of this has been a bad experience. The fact that I have issues with my other, weaker, side, including a bad arthritic knee has really interfered with the course of my recovery, my exercises, and so on. Theoretically I can put in an appeal to have an extension of insurance for the physiotherapy but the process seems very intimidating and stressful and I am not confident that I will be successful.


I can not believe what a hard time I have been having with this. I have been in a lot of pain and really feeling limited in how I move, how much I move and how fast I move.  I have been taking lots of pain medications that upsets my tummy.  I am doing better now, lots better in fact, but not enough to sleeping well or enjoying activities.  One simple example is when we went to a movie in the theatre not long ago and I found it too painful to keep seated in the theatre chair, and too hard to get up and down out if it. Walking back to the car after sitting for the show was a challenge too. At home I am once again avoiding the stairs to my basement and asking family members to do my laundry and fetch items from the storage areas for me.

Fortunately my job actually has a lot of flexibility in the actual duties. There are a few physical aspects that can not be helped, but I have spent more time doing activities like reading out loud, sitting doing nail polish and playing board games. I have been avoiding things like games where I would need to do any bending or lifting. My co-workers have been very nice about it all but they were more than ready for me to get off modified duties and for work life to get back to normal. I have been really glad that I work so few hours so that I had time to recovery in between the days I work and now I think I am handling things pretty smoothly,

Anyway a big part of why I haven't been blogging much is because the main thing I have wanted to talk about is how miserable I have been feeling and that gets boring very quickly even to me. I have to remind myself that this is far from the worst challenges I have faced and I just need to persevere once again.

I have been waiting around for most of the winter for things to be all better and now it is almost summer so it is time to suck it up and just do Stuff.  .. Now to figure out just what that Stuff might be!

Bike Accident

My son fortunately will be okay.

This afternoon my 27 year old son was cycling to work and he was hit by a car. He called from the hospital to ask if we could come and drive him to his house and informed us that he has a broken bone in his lower leg. It is in place and the other bone is sound and recovery is expected to be straight forward. He is in pain but we picked up his prescriptions for painkillers and hopefully he will get some rest tonight.

He was hit by a car that turned at an intersection when the car driver just didn't look over and turned into him. He wears a neon orange safety striped jacket when cycling so I don't know how you could miss seeing him. Thank goodness he always wears a helmet because that got bashed in too, but his head and neck are fine. It could have been so much worse.

The other guy's insurance should take care of my son's costs, but my son's bike is pretty fancy customized one, and his only means of transportation, so he will have to wait and see what the insurance does to help about repairing or replacing the bike. Some kind men in a service vehicle stopped, called an ambulance and offered to be witnesses. They gave him their business cards and kindly took his bike out of the middle of the road and will store it at their warehouse until we can take a vehicle to pick it up.

I think we will have our little grand kids for the weekend.. so their Daddy can have a good rest and keep his foot elevated. I hope I can find the energy.

Usually I think the cycling is such a good idea; it is great for fitness and for the environment. At this moment, even though it sounds ridiculous, I am really mad at that car driver and mad at my son's bike.