On Friday, Maggie and I took a much needed day off from work and decided to do something fun that we normally wouldn't take the time to do within the limits of our busy life, we enjoyed a day at the North Carolina Zoo. I have been wanting to go, but I have been battling an Achilles tendon injury for at least a year before I moved to NC, and that prevented me from doing anything that required a lot of walking. Looking back, I am not sure why I didn't go to the Doctor sooner. But for a good 3 years, my painful achilles prevented me from doing so many things I loved to do. Not the main cause for my weight, but a huge contributing factor. I would walk on it, but if I walked around for an extended period, I would be in a lot of pain and the next morning would be the worst. It would be stiff and PAINFUL to say the least and I would limp around on it for a week or two until it sub-sided, but any activity over and above normal walking would lead to a great deal of pain. When I did finally go to the doctor, he gave me a sleeping splint that I wore for a full year, but it didn't help.
Then, last April, I ended up tearing my achilles and making it necessary for me to have surgery to repair it. I was very hesitant about it, but really didn't have a choice, as I couldn't walk around on a tore tendon. I had heard so many different things about the surgery's success rate, I was nervous that I was never going to be right.
On June 4th, 2010, I had the surgery and it was a pretty long road to recovery. But this weekend was a milestone for me that I am so elated about! I finally got to the NC zoo and I wore my pedometer so I could see how many steps we walked, as I have always been curious as to how many miles you walk when walking around a theme park. At the end of the day, we have walked 12,000 steps. I looked it up and found out that was the equivilent to anywhere between 5 and 6 miles. Then later on in the day, I read that the NC Zoo has a total of 5 miles of walking paths from one end of the zoo to the other. But when we got to the end, we were so tired from walking around all day, we took the tram back instead of walking back, but that would have been a really long walk back and I think I would have over-done it, as my achilles was a bit tired and worn out from the 5 miles.
But I was so happy to have walked all that distance and only have a small amount of soreness and stiffness. I definitely wasn't in any pain. I was nervous what the next morning would bring, so I made sure to ice my achilles that night. In the morning, I was so happy to find I had NO PAIN AT ALL!!! A very, very tiny bit of stiffness when I first got up, but nothing like what I use to have. And within in minutes of getting out of bed, I walked the stiffness right off. Then that day, I spent about 8 hours on my feet while cleaning out my garage and I was again worried what two days of intense walking and exercise would do to it. But on Sunday morning when I woke, I was again pleasantly surprised to find that I had NO PAIN!
It has been 9 months since my surgery and I finally feel like a normal person again. I have been using the excuse for the last 4 years that I couldn't do this or that because my achilles was injured. Even after the surgery, I kept using my achilles as an excuse as to why I couldn't get active. I kept limiting my own exercise, thinking I could only walk a half a mile or maybe a mile. But here I am, walking 5 miles and not feeling any pain or anything. I guess for so long after my surgery (I mean after the initial 4-6 month healing process) I was afraid to push it because I was afraid to be in pain and I was afraid of re-injuring it, so instead of trying, I used it as an excuse to hold back.
Now that I know I am good, it doesn't mean I still don't have to be careful, but now I know that I can do more than I think I could. Is that always the way though.
This week I had a whopping 8 pound weight loss and on top of it, now I know I can add some good exercise into my healthy eating regime!
This is HUGE Progress for me. Nothing can stop me now!!!!
“Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”~ Mark Victor Hansen
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