Well, the time since my last post has flown by, and I’ve been starting to feel like I’m overdue to take a quick breather from things and write an update on how I’m going.

Winter was difficult, as expected. It has been the case each year during my recovery that it is more mentally draining to push myself during the colder months, and I have certainly pushed myself. The hip-specific work I’ve been doing under the guidance of my physio has been more involved than I thought it might be, and trying to include all the other fitness activities that I want to has been challenging. With the hip work always my main focus, I have been experimenting with the balance of my routine, trying to do too much at once, burning myself out, taking the absolute minimum amount of time required to recover, then doing it all again.

I received my carbon fibre orthosis at the end of July, and after a short period of testing and tweaking I have been using it without issue since the middle of August. It has already improved my walking significantly, and this will only get better with further practise and strength gains. In recent weeks I’ve been getting around the house and backyard unaided quite safely, and I have even felt confident walking distances of less than 100m out in the community. At my last physio session I increased my six minute walk test by 65m, making it 515m, and my physio and I both think I’ll be ready to do the test without crutches for the first time when I see her again next week. It feels like I might even be able to do at least 400m on my first attempt, but I might err on the side of not falling over and be more cautious.

Since I received the orthosis it has been starting to sink in that this is it, this is my final form. There will be no further aids or interventions to look forward to, and the only improvements to my condition will come from hard work and within. It has been nice to finally know where I stand, but more than anything it has been rather… underwhelming.

When I think back to soon after the accident and how I hoped my body might feel at this point in time it is hard to see myself as anything other than utterly naive. That’s not being very fair though. I was given a series of best case scenarios, none of which eventuated, and it has been a process of being gradually let down since then.

I drifted out of my coma to the news that my pelvis had been shattered but they could operate to fix it. I had sustained nerve damage and couldn’t move my right foot, but there was a chance that would get better. All my problems seemed to have solutions, and everything going to plan I would be up and walking again in twelve months. I held on to the hope in those prognoses desperately like to the edge of a precipice, and thought that if I put in a supreme effort towards rehabilitation then one day it might be possible to feel like a normal human being again. My grip on that hope has gradually loosened with the unfortunate unfolding of events since then, but it is only now with all major medical intervention complete that I can let myself fall into the chasm of disability and fully accept the harsh realities that my injuries entail.

I will always be working against the pull of an extremely misaligned pelvis. My right leg will always be a bit of a void. No matter how much muscle I build my functional strength will always be limited, and completing basic daily tasks will always be significantly more taxing than for an able-bodied person. I will be able to walk unaided with reasonable effectiveness, but never again will I know the free-flowing sure-footedness of bittersweet memories, and the sort of distance I’ll be able to manage in comfort remains to be seen.

While my body has improved in a multitude of ways since the hip replacement, at the end of the day I haven’t really been feeling less disabled than before. The pain in my hip is a lot better, but getting out of my recliner chair doesn’t seem like any less of a chore. I think more than anything this can be attributed to the high levels of exhaustion and fatigue that result from working so hard at rehabilitation, and there is nothing to be done but endure it for the short term. Maybe the warmer weather will bring about greater feelings of vitality, but it won’t be until I take an extended break from training that I’ll be able to properly enjoy my newfound abilities.

Despite the underwhelming undercurrent of the last few months, as my expectations become aligned with reality (for what I hope is the last time), I can only say that I have made great progress. When speaking specifically about my walking, things are coming along as well as I dared to hope in the lead-up to the hip replacement. Slightly better, even, but with my gaze so firmly set on greater things it has been hard to appreciate my recent walking achievements for the huge milestone that they are. I’ve only been sick once, and apart from that I’ve managed to maintain a high level of consistency with my training.

All my lower body work is coming along as well as can be expected. I have significantly improved at all the left hip isolation exercises that my physio gave me, and there is a lot of room for further progression as I continue them. Eventually it will be good to try and consolidate the hip work down to fewer, compound movements that work both hips equally, but I won’t worry about that for a while. If anything it would be good to start doing some of the isolation exercises for my right hip too, but that will involve getting out of bed earlier.

I can get deeper into a supported squat than I thought I might be able to by this point, and I’m making good progress with bridges and side planks, both of which were impossible before the operation. I can balance on my left foot comfortably for thirty seconds, and on my right foot flailingly for five. I have also been using the reformer to build strength in my right quads. My ability to build muscle in that leg will always be limited by the nerve damage, but I’ve slowly been able to increase the resistance, and it seems like I will at least be able to build some mass there.

Most recently, I have been trying to do three strength days a week where I ride the bike for 30 minutes and do all my lower body exercises in the morning, then in the afternoon do an upper body workout focusing on various static holds, push-ups, rows, and a few isolation exercises with dumbbells. Throw in the mobility work and grip training I’ve been doing when ‘relaxing’ in my recliner chair, and I’m easily spending over five hours on ‘rehab’ throughout the day. On the days between those sessions I try to use the treadmill for 5-10 minutes, do some mobility work, and do a 30-60 minute session on the bike. Saturday I at least use the treadmill, maybe have a short bike and mobility session, and on Sunday I do my best to actually relax and avoid touching any dumbbells.

So far I’ve only managed to string two full weeks like that together, but I think three is within the realm of possibility. I had hoped that I might be able work at a high capacity for longer periods, but for the short term I think it will be best to aim for three weeks of insanity followed by a week of relative rest and recalibration. I think the remainder of the year will involve more experimenting and tweaking, but by the start of next year I might be able to settle into an unchanging routine for a while and cease to have so much mental energy taken up by the non-stop analysis of what I’m doing and how I could do it better.

A month or two ago when I wasn’t doing as much strength work I did 100 minutes on the exercise bike in one day (30 in the morning 70 in the afternoon). That was nice, as before the operation my hip could never handle doing two sessions. Next I need to do 100 minutes in one go so I can find out what happens when the display goes over 99. My shoulder mobility is ever-improving, and the strength in my core and upper body has increased despite not doing as much upper body work as I’d hoped. It still feels like I will continue to improve at a steady rate with my current training regime, and I think the main limiting factor from here will be time.

I decided soon after the accident that, if necessary, it would be worth spending five years working at rehabilitation to the detriment of other areas of life. That five years will be up at the end of 2017, and there is so much left to be done before then that it’s hard not to feel crushed by the weight of the task at hand. I don’t know if I can justify spending much longer than that however, even though I wasn’t counting on losing a year in hospital when I made that plan. I’m sure I could keep improving if I work at my current level for say another three years, but the downsides of keeping my life on hold for that long would probably outweigh any benefit gained.

I won’t set myself an exact timeline for a while yet, but eventually I will have to shift my focus from recovery to how best to salvage a fulfilling existence, and doing so will require a significant cutback to my training. I will always have to be conscientious about maintaining fitness to minimise further degradation of my body, but a time will come when I will have to stop working myself to exhaustion and put my energy towards establishing a life for myself and trying to enjoy the fruits of my labour.

I can’t see myself ever working again, but that has never been a motivating factor in my recovery. When I speak of leading a somewhat normal life, I mean things like being able go out independently on a whim without requiring a thorough pre-assessment of the obstacles I might encounter, and once out being able to enjoy myself without being constantly distracted analysing pain levels and all the things that could go wrong, all the while half-wishing I was at home in my recliner chair.

I think the only way I will be able to sustain a reasonable quality of life in the future will be to put what energy I’ll have towards functioning independently, keeping in shape, spending time on hobbies, and not being a total hermit. I think I actually stand a much better chance of making a positive contribution to society if I don’t have to work, and with the impending destruction of huge chunks of the job market by automation, it would be mean-spirited to take a job away from someone without access to a disability pension.

More than anything, the long term goal I’m working towards is getting my body to a point where I’m able to undertake and enjoy some light hiking. When I spoke to a rehabilitation specialist earlier in the year he seemed to think this would be achievable, although I think anything more challenging than that won’t be sensible to attempt given my limitations. I’m sure undulating terrain will always prove difficult, but it would be unspeakably nice to at least be able to manage a fairly flat 3km and get out into nature again. It would be nice to be able to travel a bit too, although the sorts of trips I’d have most liked to do will be forever out of reach.

A shorter term goal is being able to attend appointments at the hospital without my wheelchair, and beyond that, being able to spend a night in the city in relative comfort, with the endurance to migrate between venues as necessary. The first of those goals might be achievable by early next year, but we shall see (there is quite a lot of distance to cover on the average hospital visit). For now, I will just try to keep pushing myself to the limit until the end of the year, and then take a couple of weeks off over the holiday break and see if I can actually start to feel the benefits of all my work a bit more.