🛫 🇮🇹 🙅 😭
80 days since I crashed my bicycle in a freakish way and for the first time in over 25 years and broke the right side of my hip. (Based on the x-rays “shattered” might be a better verb.)
Things I still cannot do:
- Lift my leg up while flat on my back. This is one of my PT exercises and it’s not because it hurts. It’s because no matter how hard I try, I can’t make those muscles (mostly the hip flexor) do it. This is concerning.
- Stay standing or seated normally for long periods of time. I often have to sit with my leg slightly elevated and the knee slightly bent to bring some relief from the constant pain. My PT had a fancy word for this position but I’ve forgotten it.
- Stop taking pain meds (unless I want the following list to shorten considerably)
Things I can do only recently and with great difficulty:
- Walk
- Put on my right sock, right shoe, or pants
- Drive. I’ve only attempted twice, once last week and once today (doctor and PT visits, respectively). It’s getting in and out of my sedan-shaped car that is the issue. Once driving I am ok, but I drive slow, give everyone plenty of space, and stay off the highways. At traffic lights I use my hands to adjust my leg if it has slipped from optimal pedal-operating position.
- Pick things off the floor or reach below knee-level. This requires a slow-motion dance-like move where I swing my right leg back to decrease the angle of torso-to-leg.
Yesterday my wife and two of my kids left for our spring break trip to Italy, to visit my stepson who is studying there this semester. It was planned long ago and both of my children’s first time out of the country. I waited until the last possible day to make my decision to stay here. Hopefully I do not have to explain that this is a depressing state of affairs. It is also challenging given the lists above. Carissa left the fridge, freezer, and pantry stocked with food I can easily prepare. We have all manner of delivery services these days.
Based on the report of their travel and first day there, I made the right decision.
Still, I do not know how those with permanent handicaps or chronic pain do it, especially those without strong social nets of others who can help them. Everything takes forever and involves tolerating some level of pain. Starting last night a smoke detector started beeping despite having a fresh battery. I put in earplugs and managed to sleep through it, but this morning the effort to get to the bottom of the problem and solve it almost left me insane.
I kept the days off work, as I was about a day away from utter burnout anyway, but something came up the night before my first day off, so I have worked a little to at least assist with the triage.
Meanwhile the world burns.
Update March 15, 2026
I wrote the above day two. Now on day 4 after what can only be described as A Couple Bad Days, I am taking some additional notes:
- Thursday was better than most days of the last two weeks. I noted the irony
- yesterday was truly awful and I am guessing it was due to my PT kicking my a** on Friday
- second half of today it started to get a little better
- I might have also gotten behind on my pain meds due to sleeping in. But also yay sleep?
- But also 84 days and I still have to be on multiple pain meds? That seems wrong. My doctor seems to have lost interest in me.
- The Depression is returning. I expected it sooner TBH. No exercise. Almost no time outside. Far less social interaction. Some of the excess sleep this weekend might be this.
- The small things my wife did for me were really valuable. Not having to make a trip down and up the stairs for everything. Gathering things like dishes and trash. Dishes and laundry…
- These things all require steps, a thing I have a limited quota of per day. The house is becoming a mess. I try to make a dent when I can.
- Showers etc also require steps from the quota. I’m pretty smelly at this point. Hoping I feel better in the morning.
- The Trouble Cat (the Siamese) has been extra trouble, adding to my struggles (and the mess)
- The crazy wind storm all day today has been an interesting outer metaphor for my inner environment. The house has been creaking…I haven’t experienced winds like this since the small hurricane I didn’t bother evacuating for in SoFL in ~2000-something, but that was shorter lived than this. I’m assuming crazy weather is just our new abnormal. I checked a wind map and Iowa is basically being flattened right now?! I’m in a “it’s fine” area according to this and I am shocked the electricity is still on and trees are hanging in there. It sounds like that hurricane just without the rain.