Setting the Stage

Ugh, I really miss blogging.

 

 

 

To someone who doesn't blog (or doesn't write, or maybe doesn't have ADHD) this might seem like a silly thing to miss. What is stopping me? I have an internet connection. I have hands. I blogged even when I only had 9/10ths of my usual hands. So what's the problem now?

 

I had a lot going on after the move, and was doing lots of COOL things. I tried mounted archery. I found a fantastic biomechanics trainer that actually made Spicy ride-able. I even had a lesson with a coach and strategized how to win a belt buckle barrel racing. But that whole time, something was bothering me.

 

Not a niggling in the back of my head. A pain. In the back of my leg.

 

It started in August and I ignored it for awhile. As time went on, I realized my dosage of ibuprofen was going up and up and up, and the pain wasn't really abating. I tried exercising it, resting it, stretching it. Ice, heat, compression, lighting candles and praying. My pain was pretty solidly a 9 every day, and the only reason it wasn't a 10 was because I've never been shot, and I imagine being shot hurts worse.

 

After a solid 6 weeks of no improvement, my wife pointed out that over the summer Spicy was 0.5 degrees lame and I had the vet out within two weeks for rads of both front feet. She not so gently suggested I might want to offer myself the same luxury. I begrudgingly made a doctor's appointment and after trying low hanging fruit that did absolutely nothing, I got diagnosed with a torn hamstring. 

 

So far, I really suck on stall rest. I asked the orthopedist if they made reserpine for people, and he laughed but I wasn't joking. I also have a new appreciation for the complexity of rehabbing. I'm in physical therapy, doing exercises on my own and supervised. We have a plan. It is a good plan.

 

The amount of fear I have to overcome on a daily basis to do these simplest of exercises is fascinating to me. I'm so used to things hurting that whenever the PT asks me to do something new, I feel my butthole pucker. Is it going to hurt? How much is it going to hurt? Am I going to tear my other hamstring? Will I re-tear this one? If not today, when? In a month? A year? Five years?

 

All the while, I've been earth bound. I'm trying to play with Spicy as much as I can but it's so depressing and dark and cold and, frankly, I'm so sick of doing ground work I could puke. He doesn't need more ground work!! I want to RIDE. I briefly considered sending him to boarding school, but the thought of him being far away choked me. Even if I can't ride, I find my trips out to the barn extremely therapeutic.

 

 

 

So here I am. Unable to write, because I'm unable to ride. Unable to write because I feel like this is in my way. I know this won't last forever, but for right now it feels interminable.