It's Becoming Quite Clear...

At day 18 in my recovery from surgery to repair a hamstring avulsion, it's becoming quite clear.

I suck at this.

I haven't had an experience like this before.  I've had a couple surgeries--removing vocal nodules caused by yes, talking too much, and an ablation procedure to fix a heart arrhythmia; I've been sick, of course; and I've had some minor athletic injuries that have curtailed my activities a bit.  But I've never had any health issue that has had this big of an impact on my lifestyle, for this long (and I'm not even half way to being able to go back to work yet).  And I regret to say that I have now discovered that I really suck it.

Oh, I'm following the doctor's orders.  I'm bearing only as much weight as he allows and I'm avoiding the movements I'm supposed to avoid and I'm spending a lot of my time in the recliner letting things heal.  What I like to refer to as "Obsessive Compliance Disorder" is a strong part of my personality, and it will not allow me to go against doctor's orders.

No, compliance isn't the issue...it's other parts of my personality that are causing problems.  As I mentioned here, my usual way of moving through life is "fast and sloppy."  Well, when you're propelling yourself around the house on a scooter, or worse, on crutches, fast and sloppy doesn't work.  Jim tells me that it's possible to move both quickly and deliberately, but I haven't yet achieved it.  What I have achieved is ramming around the house on my scooter, crashing into the baseboard and running over my (bare) feet and leaving a trail of dropped and broken objects and lengthy and creative strings of cuss-words in my wake.  Jim has taken to warning the dog to stay out of my way, and he frequently asks me, with great solicitude (and from a safe distance) if I need anything--probably hoping to keep me in my recliner and thus spare the house from further scooter attacks.  And the scooter turning radius sucks, so even as my shoulder pain and knee pain are taking advantage of the break from CrossFit and skating to heal, I'm developing a new pain in my right wrist from picking up the front of the scooter and yanking it violently around to change directions.

And then there's the matter of reinforcers.  Remember, I'm a special ed teacher and behavior analyst--so I know what my reinforcers are.  And the two biggies for me are, unfortunately, working out and eating.  Normally these two play nicely together, but when one becomes unavailable, well, the other one tries to take up the slack.  Add to that the fact that cooking Paleo is harder than grabbing some random crap from the cupboards (tonight's cooking adventure ended up with bacon on the floor, an egg cracked into the garbage instead of the bowl, a bacon-grease-covered spatula bouncing off the stove and onto the floor, and Jim being once again treated to the breadth and depth of my less-than-appropriate vocabulary), and you have an unprecedented amount of pizza and ice cream making its way into my diet the past couple days.  Which of course makes me even more cranky.

So, much as I'd like to say that I'm enjoying my rest time and that I'm getting lots of productive things done in my recliner and that I'm appreciating the fact that my injury isn't permanent and that I'll be back on my feet relatively quickly...honesty compels me to admit that I suck at this.