Scarred for life

The worst part of this whole recuperation process is the inactivity. I was a reasonably active adult before this. Back when I originally started this blog I wore a pedometer all day over the course of a few normal days and discovered that on weekdays I walked an average of 2 1/2 miles just living my life. And on weekends during the spring/summer/fall, I would hike 4 -7 miles on the weekend when I could.

Before the accident, my brother Chris told me that he wanted to get back to hiking, it had been a couple years since we had been hiking together. I was excited, especially since my car died in early March and I had made the decision not to replace it right away. If Chris wanted to hike on a regular basis then I would have a larger range of options for hiking and I wouldn't have to rent a car to go. Of course the accident changed all that. Chris now no longer has a car for the summer either. And of course physically neither one of us are going to be walking the trails this year. I'll miss getting out to nature, the smells the sights and the sounds. Grrr... Arrgh

I'm doing some exercises, but I'm basically in a holding pattern until I can put weight on the hip which will happen in about 11 days. I use the crutches around the house and to take short walks to the deli on the corner or the park down the block and that takes a lot of energy. But I can't wait to be able to start working on the leg and get the muscles back. They are so wasted that you can really see the difference in my right leg and left leg. And then as an added joy, I've spent so much time lying on my back in the past 2 months, that I discovered a dime sized bald spot has developed on the back of my head. Like I didn't have enough to obsess over.

Most of my days are spent either lying in my bed or sitting in my office chair and it all gets kind of old. So a couple weeks ago I took advantage of my parents' offer to help me out in some way and asked them to rent me an electric scooter so I could venture further from home and run errands. Hoboken is 1.2 miles square so everything is pretty much within walking (or scooter) distance. Happily my parents obliged, so I hopped on the internet to find one. The first place I tried was a big national internet site called scootaround.com, but when they emailed me the quote I was floored. $415 + various other charges to rent one for a month! I did a bit more searching and found Wellcare Home Mobility in Hackensack, NJ, they rent the same scooters for only $125 per month! And bonus! The gentleman I spoke with was so nice and so personable. He asked the height and weight of the person needing the scooter. I said 5'7" and about 190 pounds and he said "Oh, so a smaller person." I told him I loved him...

The scooter has been great. I can get to the grocery store and the drugstore and the post office all by myself now. And today Scott and I cruised on down to the waterfront to eat our bagels for breakfast while watching the river traffic. Here's a picture Scott took of me.

It was a beautiful morning to be out and about.

I weighed myself this morning and I was down to 185.8. This is the lowest weight I've been since my sophmore year of college. I'm amazed that I keep losing especially given my reduced acivity level. The one thing I could never get a handle on in the past is getting both the eating and the exercising right at the same time. If I was exercising, I would eat more than I should. If I was eating right, I wasn't exercising like I should. So maybe this time I can get it right. We will certainly find out in a little under 2 weeks.

All right it's time for an overshare... The surgeries I had were pretty major so the scars are accordingly major. I'm stil sort of amazed by them so I've taken pictures of them.

This is my neck scar. It's still healing because I had to wear that damn neck collar 24/7. It would get no air and my neck was always hot and sweaty. Eventually, there was just a small hole there, which has now closed up. Scott commented that I would no longer be able to enter the Matrix... (sorry, geek humor)

Also notice all the tape gunk on my skin. It was weeks before I got all the gunk off my arms and my chest so I can't wait to stop having to put a dressing on my neck as well.

This is the scar that runs down my side and halfway across my lower abdomen. This is the first one I saw and the one that made me realize that my bikini wearing days are over, not that they really every got started. I haven't worn a bikini since I was about 7 years old and had nothing to fill it out with. Jeez, I never had a chance to really live I guess... Notice the the dots running down either side, those are from the staples they used to close up the incision. And there were a ton of them. I joked in the hospital that I looked like a shark bite victim.

This is the one that runs up the side of my thigh and then curves onto my lower back. There is also one more that runs straight up my butt cheek onto my lower back, but really, I've already scared you with pictures of my stomach and thigh, nobody needs to see my ass too. When I finally saw these, I realized that I had been filleted. But that's what you get when you break your acetabular and dislocate your sacro-iliac joint ( also know as, your hip socket and butt joint). I know these will fade eventually and I'm rubbing cocoa butter and vitamin E on them to help that along. But ultimately I'm not really all that bothered by them. To me, they don't represent a horrible injury. To me, they mean I'm alive. I survived a situation that could have very easily gone the other way and almost did.

Scott thinks that I should get a cool tatoo around them, like a chinese dragon twisting around the scar. Eh, maybe.

I think that's all for now. I hope nobody was eating when they saw those pictures!

Cheerios!