Keeping my Spirits Up

I had a fairly busy weekend and was able to see a number of people and had some excellent visits but Donny works on the weekends so I'm left on my own pretty much all day barking orders at the kids (which they don't much enjoy): can someone please walk the dog? could you please make me tea? please throw in the dark load of laundry and hang it up. please unload / load the dish washer. etc. As you can imagine no one jumps up and does it the first time they are asked. It gets frustrating!

When I imagined being non-weight bearing for 6 weeks (which has now become 8.5 weeks), I imagined doing stuff but on crutches. The one (obvious) thing I overlooked is the fact that crutches occupy both hands. You can't do much stuff without hands! I have figured out how to grip my crutches with my armpit and swing them around (one at a time) to move along which allows one hand to be free but this is a fairly dangerous practice! I few times I've knocked myself off balance while doing this. I've always recovered okay so far but I have nightmares about smashing my head into the granite counter top on my way down!

My physio is going well and doing exercises and icing 3x per day forces me to take breaks from working. I don't look forward to the exercises but always feel proud of myself when they are over because I really work hard at them. Today, my physiotherapist said he will get me on the bike next time! This is something I really look forward to.

In spite of all these positive things and the people who visit and the help I get from my wonderful family and the progress I'm making, I still have down times when I feel, quite honestly, sadness and despair. At first, I blamed the pain meds but those have been out of my system for a long time. I get mad at myself for feeling this way because everything is going so well and so many people are so much worse off than I am ... but the feeling just comes sometimes and I can't always push it away. And then I found this person's blog post called "The Mental Side of Recovering from Ankle Surgery" and that made me feel better about feeling down. She pretty much sums things up for me. I am (was) a very active person (swimming, yoga, walking a lot) and now I do pretty much nothing. I know it's cold out but I really miss being outside! I'm hoping when I can get back into the pool, I'll start even feeling better (count down: 13 days!)