No more crutch to lean on

Thursday October 20

It is four weeks till the next appointment. That solves the ‘how long am I staying here’ conundrum. This time round it’s a different doctor. He explains things better. That what he sees in my x-ray is that there are no clear signs of a problem. As I don’t feel pain, we assume all good, and it’s time to move on over the next six weeks to walking first with a stick and then without. Then check again. I’m also safe to travel and he’s happy if I have the check up in Romania.

This is what I wanted to hear, and more importantly, I’m told the information in a way that makes sense to me.

A week later I’m at the physio again, and she’s braver than me. Wants me to leave on a walking stick. I might have done it, but I knew that I had to go into town and wait for my sister to pick me up. Probably I can do, but it’s quite long way for the first try, so I chicken out and take the crutches.

Later at home I feel comfortable trying out the walking stick, and quickly realise it’s much better and more comfortable. I can walk more naturally, and a few aches and pains I had been feeling go away with the new crutches-less walking. As I had suspected, the occasional muscle tweaks I’d had were caused by the unnatural way that walking with crutches creates, and the extended period of doing this.

From this I feel happy that I can proceed to buy a ticket to travel back to Romania and am booked to travel on Sunday November 13.

I’m also on a different part of physio exercises now. The ones I have been doing were quite easy, the only issue was the regularity of doing them – four times a day. Now I have a different, quite extensive package, which if done at one time can take up to 30 minutes, depending on good I’m doing.

There is a certain irony in how this works – as you get better, rather than the effort being reduced, it’s necessary to do more and more difficult things. It makes sense, the only way to improve is to continuously strive for more, which in this case means building up the muscle strength that will allow me to have a normal life sooner. At the same time, it does feel like I am being punished for my success. Never mind, we’ll keep going.