It has been asked by several, how's the back and how much longer will I be in the backbrace? Hmmm...
The back is endlessly annoying. It aches constantly, something I was hoping it would learn to outgrow. I mean, it's been eight months. I've done penance for my physical stupidity measured out in pain, disability, embarassment, regret, and endless self-condemnation. I've wept for my L2. I've apologized to its every many tiny compression fractures. Surely I've paid enough, appeased enough, pleaded enough for my poor aggreived back. Could it not just forgive me and heal its stubborn little vertebral self?
When last I saw the Bone/Nerve Doc, she said the bone was healing, not well, not at a pace to be desired, but incrementally, the crushed vertebra attempting valiantly to recalcify and meld onto the healthy vertebra above it. She showed me tiny fingers of bone on the screen, reaching upward from the squished marshmallow bone. The fragility of new bone bridges was a sobering sight to look at. The knowledge of how little support is actually there scares the sin out of me. Still, it is trying to heal and the doctor's encouraged enough not to recommend surgery at this point, so that, at least is good.
The backbrace, my lovely torture corset, she sentenced me to continue to wear indefinitely. Her exact words were, "We'll see how you're doing in a few months more with the brace..." My foolish optimistic heart is fervently hoping to be free of the awkward corset with its incredible heat-retaining properties before the late spring heat starts to rise. I don't know that I can take another summer wrapped in a blanket with the temperatures rising over 90F.
I am pretty much resigned to the fact that my back will never be the same again, even if I do rehabilitate. I'm pencilling in the idea that I will always have discomfort and be limited in my abilities to lift and stand for long periods. I am not happy with this prospect, but I am trying to be realistic. Having unrealistic optimism only sets me up for depression when I fail to come back one hundred percent.
Resigned about my prospects I may be, but I am not giving up on trying to improve. I asked the doctor about exercise and she said, yes, by all means, do. The more I move, the better. In fact, the less I move, the less I push myself to stay active, the less I will be able to. So, if I don't want to become permanently disabled, I have to work harder now to exercise on a regular basis than I did before I was injured.
Doc suggested walking, biking, eliptical, or swimming - anything non-impact and non-weight-bearing.
Well, swimming's right out - no pool or access to one.
Biking? I don't own a bike and all the ones I've borrowed to test-ride require an uncomfortable forward leaning posture which is next to impossible to maintain in a brace. There are bicycles that allow more upright posture, but I'd have to buy one, and, even if I did, I have problems with storing it. The sit-up-straight cycles tend to be heavier framed. I don't have a garage and there's nowhere outside that I could store a bike securely, so I'd have to park it in my foyer and take it up and down my front stairs every time I used it. I'm not thinking that would be easy or good for my back, so biking's out.
I actually do own an elliptical trainer. The problem with the eliptical is that I stopped using it as soon as my tenant moved in on the other side of my very thin central wall. The eliptical makes an ungodly combination of rattles and squeaks. I've had it serviced, but the cacaphony it emits while in use can still be heard quite annoyingly through the walls. I know because I tested the week before my tenant moved in. I go to great lengths to keep my tenant from knowing how thin that wall is. I don't want to bother her with my noise and I certainly don't want her to know how much of hers and her three-year-old's I hear. Keeping her happy and comfortable over there is my second job. It's what pays the mortgage, so the eliptical is right out.
Which leaves walking. Thud! Walking. Yuck. It's not that I haven't done a lot of walking as exercise before. When I lived in New Orleans proper I used to walk huge distances on a regular basis for exercise, following the street-car lines, travelling through mid-city, through the Garden District, into downtown, and then returning to mid-city. I'd walk dozens of blocks on an every other day basis and make the full thirteen mile circuit at least once a week. So I know walking and can do it. But now I live in the suburbs, the not so nice, not so pedestrian friendly, and definitely not so interesting suburbs. I've tried walking around here and I just get freaking bored. Bored, bored, bored. And that's a really bad thing, cause if something bores me, I simply won't voluntarily do it.
So I'm working outside of the box here. I'm riding my trikke. Yes, yes, I'm one of those idiots who bought an infomercial exercise product. Late night television (when I used to get television) used to have this one commercial that came on all the time. They showed a whole bunch of young fit guys practically flying on these odd scooter type things that have two footboards instead of one and are propelled by rocking your weight side to side and turning the front wheel back and forth. No seat, no gears, no drive train, nothing to propel you forward except moving your center of gravity and positioning the trikke below you. By pushing with your legs alternately and turning the front wheel, the trikke is always trying to roll toward where your weight is greatest. You keep moving your center of gravity and it keeps chasing it. (There are videos, hell even the original infomercial, of the trikke in motion on the internet if this description left you scratching your head.)
Propelling the trikke forward is completely non-impact. You pull on the handlebar with your left arm while you push with your right leg and then switch to use your right arm and left leg. Consequently, the muscles of the back are being pulled in alternating lateral directions and given a fairly good work-out without bearing extra weight on the backbone.
When I first started riding it again after my long period of non-exercise, I didn't expect to be able to ride. I thought it would hurt my back and that would be the end of it, but I was wrong. It actually doesn't bother the back at all. I stand up straight, yes, in all my torture-corsetted glory and wiggle my trikke back and forth down the road, slalom-style without any difficulties in my back. My real problem was that, after months of convalescence, I was so out of shape, I had no stamina. It's taken me weeks to build back muscle and lung capacity enough to make riding the trikke actual exercise again.
So that's what I'm doing now to try to rehabilitate, riding my trikke. I look like an absolute nutjob, I am completely painfully aware of this - a chubby middle-aged woman with her hair in an updo fastened with a huge bow, earbuds in her ears with the long white wires snaking behind her connecting to the audio-book-playing ipad inside the messenger bag she's wearing slung cross-body, riding a contraption no one in these parts has ever seen before, using a laughable side to side motion. It doesn't help that I don't own (won't own) proper exercise clothing and usually wear the same clothes I always wear, normal pants and shirts with sometimes long flowy sleeves. If you wear exercise clothing, you have to concede that you're actually exercising, and I much prefer to pretend I'm just hopping on my little trikke to go somewhere.
I have, in fact, finally found somewhere to go on my trikke. Living as I do in the middle of a lower middle class neighborhood squished in between some major thoroughfares and industrial/commercial areas, there's no recreational area to ride, no bike paths or parks, no lakeshore or paved river levee. It's all just cramped and car-cluttered streets with exceedingly bad gravelly and uneven pavement and record-setting potholes.
Riding a trikke isn't like riding a bike. There are limitations to where you can ride it. Since there is no drive train on the trikke and propulsion depends solely on the trikke following your shifting center of gravity, it requires good pavement to keep moving. Any texture to the road surface, any small or large breaks, any upward incline no matter how slight, causes friction. It takes very little friction to rob you of momentum and make forward motion difficult to impossible. Flat smooth concrete is the best surface on which to ride, but it is in short supply in this area with its illustrated encyclopedia of road-surfaces and street-patching materials laid out in ever-changing half-block by half-block display.
I've worked at it though and finally found a somewhat circuitous path across my neighborhood which takes me over not-good but rideable road to a four lane highway. Once I cross the highway, I enter into a neighborhood peopled by folks who drive much nicer cars than my immediate neighbors and on much much nicer, lovely smooth, blissfully flat concrete. Ah, the joy of not having to dodge potholes and pavement cracks and chasms, the pleasure of actually getting a bit of momentum going and starting to roll without struggling. I have, at long last discovered a solid mile of superbly rideable concrete. I start at the southern end of one of the few long straight streets in these neighborhoods, only nearby street not broken up every few blocks by canals and major thoroughfares. I travel in my serpentine slaloming motion northward along a low traffic street lined with houses well above my economic status for a full mile, enjoying the feel of riding the trikke the way it's supposed to be ridden, moving forward at an agreeable relatively rapid speed without undue effort. I roll enjoyably until the road dies out abruptly rather than throw itself across the ten lanes of interstate beyond the concrete barriers.
There, right there, just before the massive concrete map dissecting interstate, is my destination. After two miles of travel and a half hour's worth of exercise (yes, I average only about four miles an hour on the contraption), I find myself at a very friendly little diner.
With the flip of two latches, my trikke very conveniently folds up. I come to the diner often enough that no one bats an eye as I roll it in and park it beneath my booth table. It fits quite nicely down there and makes a comfy footrest for me as I stow my earphones, pull out my book and wait for my unspoken usual, red beans and rice with sausage.
I always time my trips for mealtime and, since I'd be eating anyway, I don't have to feel guilty about it. I feel as though I've actually earned the meal with the full hour of exercise I'll total in the coming to and getting home from the diner.
The beans were tasty as always tonight and I feel a good honest tired. My back aches but it would no matter what.
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