How to heal

I got to stop by CFD yesterday, and it was so amazing!  I didn't stay for a very long time, just enough to say hi to a bunch of people and show off my shoulder and how it's hooked up to a bunch of electrodes, so I can make it twitch.

Seeing all the lovely active sweaty people made me realise I need to stop sulking about being a one-armed wonder and start living the "wonder" part while making the "one-armed" part as short and impermanent as possible.  So here's my game plan.  Some of these points I'm already following; others I'm going to start incorporating.  As always, any and all comments and suggestions are welcome!

DIET
With a few exceptions that I'll note below, I'm going strict paleo until I'm healed enough to use my arm again.  The reasoning is pretty simple: it promotes reduction/avoidance of inflammation, which in turn helps avoid infection and speeds healing.  I've also been using an ice pack and occasional doses of ibuprofen, as my shoulder still seems to me to be a little swollen (no redness, oozing or other signs of infection, though).

I've also been keeping half an eye on portions, though I'm not actually counting calories.  Reason is that I know my BMR is about 1500 cals/day when I don't factor in any activity, and I haven't been very active at all lately.  This isn't too much of an issue, since the sudden and dramatic decrease in exercise and activity means my appetite dropped to almost nil.  However, I do tend to binge-eat when I'm bored, and ennui has been the main emotion of late.  The times I have caved, I've kept it pretty paleo, though, so that's a semi-victory.  A better fix is finding something to erase the boredom, and I'm working on that.

My exceptions to the paleo rule are mostly driven by the fact that I'll be staying with my godparents for a couple weeks while my parents are on vaycay and I'm still pretty helpless.  They keep chickens in their backyard!  I'm also expecting to encounter

• delicious homemade fermented things (like sauerkraut, not beer), as well as
• happy milk!  that is, not all cooked and nastified, just as pure as Bessie intended (wink wink)

In addition, I'm fully planning to deviate from strictitude when I just want some goddammn chocolate already.

EXERCISE

So far, this has consisted of one leisurely two-mile stroll around the neighborhood a few days ago.  I attempted some squats and one-arm push-ups against the arm of the couch the same day, but I was still pretty shaky from the meds and it didn't work out very well.  Since then, however, I've focused on cutting down severely on the meds, and I think I'm finally close enough to myself again to attempt another try.  Besides walking, which I intend to do at least once a day, I've come up with

• squats
• pistols, once I'm up for it
• one-armed push-ups off the wall or the arm of the couch
• side plank holds
• front one-armed plank holds, once I'm up for it
• sit-ups
• one-armed kettlebell stuff

As soon as I can do more than just slow controlled movements (I don't know how long that'll be), I'll start working bouts of slow running into my walks, preferably barefoot, as well as jumps onto low objects, like stairs.  At the moment, any movement that causes me to tense up my body and thus my shoulder involuntarily or quickly is fairly painful.

For my right arm: officially I'm still not supposed to take it out of the sling unless I'm showering or doing the only prescribed exercises, which consist of straightening my elbow and bending my wrist, 20 reps at a time, 3 times a day.  I've been taking it out of the sling and letting it rest on  a pillow in my lap as much as I can, working my wrist and hand, as well as bending and straightening my arm when I'm standing with it hanging by my side.  There's little to no pain associated with these movements, or with slow isolated shrugs (of which I'm still doing VERY few, just to be safe), mostly just joint stiffness.  I'm pretty worried (read: totally paranoid) about losing muscle mass, though, so in my eyes it looks like my arm's already transformed into this shrunken blobby thing from a week of disuse.  Meh.

MEDICATION/MEDICAMENTS

Like I've mentioned before, I'm been prescribed some pretty serious meds for the pain, which all the doctors told me numerous times was going to be quite considerable.  The first several days it was bad enough that I was popping pills like a toddler eating jelly beans off the floor of a movie theater.  Side effects included being awake for like 4 hours a day, not wanting to eat anything at ALL and getting seriously backed up in the ol' GI department (tmi, sorry!  but something you should definitely be aware of if you ever have to take these), as well as being super shaky and out of it whenever I was awake.  Now the discomfort has shrunk to more manageable levels, so I'm trying to do without the scrips as much as possible, relying more on ibuprofen or my handy dandy shoulder electrifier during the day, then taking meds at night if I need the help to get comfortable enough to sleep.  

To help with the anti-inflammation, I'm taking between 6 and 9 capsules of fish oil every day.  I'm also drinking a couple glasses of Metamucil+water and at least 4 6-oz cups of fully caffeinated coffee every day to help combat the aforementioned particularly unfortunate side effect, and it is totally working.  The more you know...

REST

At this point I'm just trying to get back into a normal awake-during-daylight-hours schedule, and get between 8 and 10 hours of sleep at night.  But sometimes naps are an awesome way to pass the time.

So there you have it!  My genius plan to take over the world be a total badass again as soon as possible.  What do you guys think?  

PS:  Here's me being extremely pouty a day or two after the surgery:

...and here's me right after I was finally able to take a SHOWER!  And put on REAL CLOTHES!  And a BRA!  I tell ya, bathing never felt so good.

(btw yes I know my clothes don't match at all.  it was the first thing I could put on after over 72 straight hours of that damn hospital gown, and I wanted some COLOR!)

-Nelly

The Caveman Ninja Strikes Back

This is part two in a 3-post series on the Fifth Ape Fundamentals course I took with Colin.  Here's part one, and here's the write-up of the first class I took from him.

So I had this dream the other night.

You know how sometimes you'll have a "flying" dream?  Where suddenly, by some miraculous mechanism, you find yourself floating a few inches off the ground, then higher and higher and before you know it you're soaring, miles high.  And it always feels so incredibly effortless and natural - you were born to fly, it couldn't be any other way! - that when you first wake up, the action of remaining tethered to the earth is the one that seems more unnatural.

Well.  I had a parkour dream.

I can't remember all the details, but there was definitely some insane intrigue going on.  At some point I had to chase someone through an airport terminal that was also somehow a grocery store.  But that's not important.  The important part is, while chasing this unremembered foe, I had to get myself over a lowish obstacle (I think it was a turnstile.  yes I know there are not normally turnstiles in airports or grocery stores).  And I vaulted.

like this.  via

When I woke, everything else about the dream faded fairly quickly.  But that feeling - of effortless almost-flight through no miracle but the work of my own body - has stuck with me.  So it's in dedication to that awesomest of dreams (and in hopes of eventually making them reality) that I'm writing this now.

My bra is full of sand.

There's dust and dirt coating my skin, in my hair and my eyes,  crunching in my teeth and between the waistband of my pants and my skin.  My knees are covered in bruises.  There's also a nice one blossoming on my back, right in the middle of my spine.  My forearms, shoulders, upper back and pretty much every other exposed piece of skin is sporting a lovely shredded look from slamming into the gritty ground over and over.  And I cannot wait to do it all over again.

Ok, ok, I'll explain.

Yesterday I spent one of the most amazingly fun (G-rated) hours I've had in years, here:

via

with this dude:

via

Don't be jealous, ladies.  He charges by the hour and you can schedule a lesson or six at his site.

For this past Christmas, my dad got me caveman/ninja/parkour/ape lessons from Colin, to be used whenever I could fit them in.  The group lessons always seemed to fall at a time when I couldn't make it, so we finally decided to use part of my dad's gift towards a one-on-one lesson just to get things rolling (so to speak) and use the rest up whenever I can.  And omgz it was SO worth it.

Surprisingly enough, there was no crawling in this day's warm-up.  There were, however, squats and high knees and butt-kickers and skipping and broad jumps, which WOW do I ever suck at and I felt like a total fool doing them.  But now I know kind of what to practice to not look quite so foolish.

When Colin and I discussed what we wanted to cover in the lesson, I told him running and falling, as those seem to be my downfalls (hah!) for most of my big exercise failures.  We started out with break falls, which I kind of remembered from  my jiu-jitsu days, but the way he teaches them are aikido-based, so much less focus on heavy impact and "just get used to it, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."  His method is much softer, rounder, gentler, working with the ground as opposed to fighting against it.  Not what I'm used to, but much less pain than I was expecting.  So, good.

Then we moved on to rolling.  Now, let me say this.  When I was doing jiu-jitsu, rolls were pretty much the one major thing I could never get.  No matter how much I practiced, it just never clicked.  I think most of that is due to an intense visceral fear of being upside-down, which causes me to block out the time between the entry into and exit from the roll - I remember going into it, and I remember coming out of it, but that moment in the middle is a total blank.  If I can neither focus on in the moment nor remember after the fact anything about my position, I can't improve on it.  So I thought.

Well, apparently all those hours of practice, even as they were filling me with despair and pouty feelings, instilled some kind of muscle memory, because I didn't totally suck at rolling.  I still kind of sucked.  And I can't roll straight.  But I can roll.  What's more, I can roll on my left side.  Actually better than the right side, probably because my brain won't handle the switch at all so I have to just turn it off and go.  It was amazingly exhilarating and I'm still grinning just thinking about it.

After rolling, when I was finally completely covered in dirt, we had a little while left to focus on running.  I'd worn my crazy awesome toe shoes for most of the time, but when you're getting barefoot running lessons from an actual caveman ninja, you kind of have to go completely barefoot.  I really really should have gotten a picture of this because I want to show you Colin's feet compared to mine.  You don't think about posture of the foot very much, but there are very noticeable differences once you look.  Even my feet, which are relatively flexible and strong from my dancing days, look practically newly-unbound next to his.  And no, Finn, I don't have a foot fetish.  At least, not a sexual one.  I'll get a picture.  Then you'll understand.

We started this bit out with just plain walking.  That is, normal old heel-toe walking, across the stage area of the theater.  Even when going barefoot, as we both were, you can hear a soft but distinct crunching thud as the heel comes down with every footfall.  Then we walked back, this time going toe-heel, or "fox-walking."  The difference is more noticeable than you'd think, even at a similar pace.  This was repeated several more times, slowly getting into a very quick short stride, almost a shuffle.  At this point it's hard not to break into a soft run, which is what we moved to next.

There's so many different points to think about when your body's not used to this type of movement - land on outer-ish forefoot and push off middle-ish forefoot but don't run on your toes and don't really push off, just pick your feet up; keep your body a stacked column but a leaning stacked column, like the Tower of Pisa; move your arms but not like that; keep your ankles relaxed (bwuh?); don't flex your foot all the way (as I do every single time); etc etc zomguh!  I think I kind of got it a couple times, when we moved out of the theater and were running up and down the road for more room.  Trouble is, I get all Zen'd out and want to just close my eyes and float along whenever I get into that zone.  Not quite the best thing to do when running near moving cars.

And then we were done.  I stayed a little bit and we chatted about feet and posture and how the dawn of agriculture was really where it all started to go downhill and maybe we shouldn't have come down from the trees at all.  That kind of thing.  And I left covered in dirt and sweat and bruises and rashes on my arms from throwing myself face down on the sand so damn many times, but positively bouncing with excitement for the next time I get to do it all.  I'll keep you all posted on my gradual but inevitable evolution into a sexy bad-ass cavelady/ninja/traceuse!

Also you all really need to check out Colin's site.  He has a whole lot to say about nearly everything, and almost all of it makes sense.

-N