I want to start off by first saying a huge “Thank you!” to my wife Kelly. It has been 18 days since my surgery and she hasn’t killed me. For the first two weeks after surgery she did everything from help me shower to tie my shoes. Today was actually the first day since the surgery that I did both on my own. But lets not get a head of ourselves.
I woke up from surgery with a big surprise of being in a cast and being told by my surgeon, “It was worse than we thought”. To add insult to injury, I was also told I couldn’t run for at least two weeks. I will paraphrase the next two weeks… no running, shower with a trash bag over my arm, can’t seem to figure out how to be left handed, go to work in slipper because they don’t haves laces… did I miss anything? I finally had my post op appointment on Tuesday to find out just how bad it was. I didn’t just tear the ligament…it was a complete rupture that had to be repaired. I also found out that I had a good deal of arthritis that had to be cleaned up. So instead of a cute little incision that I was expecting… I got to see this when the nurse cut off the cast.
The good new is that The doc said I could start running as long as I gave it another 24 hours and kept my new brace on all the time. This new brace is a two piece plastic form fitted contraption that keeps me from attempting to do anything dumb with my right hand. Kelly came up with the idea of wearing a warm up sleeve on under the brace to keep the plastic from rubbing my skin. This also gave me a washable option since they just gave me something that resembled a mix between an old sock and an ace wrap. Not something that was going to hold up to daily running and washing. Internet shopping and overnight delivery brought me two pairs of warm up sleeves. Yes, that’s four sleeves with thumb holes and moisture wicking goodness.
Tonight was my second run since my surgery and it feels so good to be back out pounding pavement. My first run back was a three mile run immediately followed by a five mile cool down on Wednesday night (I was told three miles was a good distance for my first run back). I could feel each and every bit of those 8 miles the next day. I never claimed to be the brightest bulb on the tree. Tonight I ran five miles around the neighborhood. Kelly is out running the Tuna 200 relay with our Running Club Team so I had to figure out how to tie my shoes all by myself. Right now Kelly is running her second leg of the relay which is 9 miles long.
Now I have to figure out how to get back on track for OBX. I already missed one of the two 20 mile runs in our training program. The last one is supposed to be this Sunday. Do I suck it up and go for the 20 even though I had a two week hiatus from running? Do I not and start the plans tapering next week? Either way I need to be prepared to run 26.2 miles on November 10th… possibly with my brace on.