Anywho, there should be at least another update this week, then regular updates from next week – I’ve got a couple of martial arts movies to waffle about, as well as some updates on the new prosthesis being put together.

Related posts:

1. … and I’m back!
2. … oh yeah, looks like I’m back :)
3. Mangled stump

But hey, at least I’m blogging!

You’ll have to indulge a slightly grumpy post, as I’m a bit grumpy tonight. I was warming up in prep for class, as I do every time before class. I’ve found doing a full round of leg stretches before class allows me to push my legs farther than I would in class since it doesn’t matter if I break the suction seal on my leg, which will normally happen a few times when doing a full round of leg stretching

Anywho, I was doing this and checked up on my foot, and you know what? I’ve gone and split the bloody toes on my foot shell again! Wifey said to stand up and try a few techniques to see how stable I was; sure enough, the thing’s gimped (i.e. I fell over) It doesn’t provide much of a problem when I’m in shoes or stomping around the house, but as soon as I roll into some exercise (especially when doing partner work!) that puts pressure on the “toes” of the foot, it’s just too easy to mangle myself or inadvertently injure my training partner.

The frustrating part is that this has come after two more weeks of missed classes – two weeks back I sliced open one of my fingers (don’t laugh!) trying to put away an airing tray in the baking tray drawer when it got caught between the sharp end bits on the wire of the airing tray and the raw wood on the cabinet. This meant that I couldn’t perform locks/holds with one of my hands, let alone form a fist!

Then last week I had an infected sore on the base of my stump that I ended up having to lance and drain in order to relieve the pressure. Normally I can heal up overnight when I do this, but this one required a bit of extra love as it turned out to be 2-3 infected sores close together once I opened it up and all three needed draining and a little bit of extra time to recover. Thankfully I had the week off work (took some much overdue annual leave from the office for a break) and could take it easy, but still, it meant that I missed another week of training.

So yeah, three weeks of inconvenient setbacks to heading back to the dojo.

Still, it’s not like I’m in a rush or anything, it’s just that I really enjoy training and martial arts and can see how it has had such a positive effect on my condition, and when I miss successive weeks of training due to issues with my leg, it’s frustrating.

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1. Movie double part 1 – Best of the Best (1989)
2. Movie double part 2 – Kuro-Obi (Black Belt) (2007)
3. Catching up on what’s been happening

About 12 months back I noticed a small lump near the crown of my scalp – being the delightfully slack person I am, I decided it was fine and nothing to worry about. Shoot forward to November last year, and I finally had a skin cancer check up. To be honest I should have gone in to have this done a while back, because even though I’m still in my 20s, being a ranga, I should be more conscious of this. Especially since my hair’s not as thick as it used to be either!

Anywho, so the skin cancer guy has a look, and nothing out of the ordinary. I point out the spot on my head hiding in my overdue-for-a-haircut mess of reddish hair, and I’m sent away with a “see your doctor” slip of paper. After seeing my GP, I was then referred to a specialist, who suggested that taking a knife to it would be the happiest method of dealing with it. I went into surgery about a fortnight later, which brings us to the end of January (yes, I was slack following up on the referral slip and seeing my GP). Now, considering the size of the bump, I’m quite surprised at how painful it was! I guess because after it gets cut out of your scalp and they stitch the wound back together it pulls tightly on your skin and causes extra pressure, but I didn’t sleep well at all until the stitches came out… and crazily enough once that was sorted, my head felt a lot nicer and I was back to my usual sleeping habits!

It’s been neraly two months since I had the spot removed and funnily enough it’s still not 100% healed – almost, but not quite done as yet. The test on the bit they removed came back without any nasties, so this one ended up being a preventative measue and it’s re-enforced how proactive I’ve become with at least looking after myself when I’m outside – when working in the garden enjoying the subrubian life, I’m out there with sunscreen (30+, and now with smelly clear zinc as well!) and the world’s most awesome sombrero. Because they’re cool.

It also goes without saying that I kept from training for a couple of weeks due to the recovery – rolling round, falling over, being thrown or getting into locks and holds wouldn’t be doing the recovery any favours, and it’d be nasty if the stitches caught on something mid-way through class! If life were a Tarantino film though, that would have happened and people would have been bathing in the red stuff!

So unless you want a knife taken to your scalp, wear a hat you douchebag. Or at least make sure you have a nice full head of hair to absorb the impact from the sun

This announcement has been brought to you by me, Sean, the colour orange, and the letter ‘R’.

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1. Archive: Ack!
2. Breakfalls

I’ve been training on and off since mid-late November due to a handful of injuries that have been rolling my way, probably the most persistent of which has been my stump’s ongoing issues since November. It actually started after I took our dog out for a walk after Wifey and I caught up with my brother and sister-in-law for a weekender, and ended up mangling the back of my stump. This wasn’t a biggie at first because I thought I’d just done some minor surface damage to the stump, but it ended up turning out to be more serious and on-going than I first imagined.

What ended up happening only started to get resolved maybe a month ago – what had happened was to do with some foam padding added to what’s called the “seat” of the prosthesis. This is the part of the socket that comes up to the base of your arse cheek and forms a foundation to hold your weight when you walk – by doing this, it means the weight and pressure of your body is spready out on your bum (which is handy, because it’s cushiony and generally has a large surface area!) and along the bottom of your stump, which can only physically take so much repeated pressure/impacts before struggling to hold your weight.

Anywho, because I’m pretty active, a while back my specialist put some tough foam-like padding (only a few mm thick) along the back of the seat of the prosthesis to soften the cutting-like impact walking was having on my socket liner. This is a good thing btw, more cushion = less direct impact. The issue was that a while ago, part of the foam padding broke off and I ignored it, because at first it wasn’t making a difference. However, after that long walk with our dog it happened to grind away so much skin that it caused an open wound (at the time though, I didn’t realise the extent of the damage). Roll on to December and I had two weeks off work over the x-mas break, which was great for my leg because I kept the prosthesis off for the most part. However, jumping back into work and all the goodies that comes with my work ethic, and again I had problems with my leg. It was getting very, very frustrating!

My lightbulb moment came in February – after getting into my socket and feeling the familiar soreness on the back of my stump, I put my finger between the liner and the socket where the pain was comgin from and took a look, and the exact spot where the sore happened to be was on the torn edge of the foam backing! Following this revelation, I made an appointment and had my specialist remove the offending material and replace it. The effect was immediate, and for the first time in months, my stump is slowly healing itself.

So, because of this in particular, training has been really erratic – I’ve only done a handful of classes this year so far, and am nowhere ready to grade next month (I also missed out the December grading due to the issues knocking me out solidly from November 2009 until the new year, so that’s two in a row as we generally hold gradings quaretly throughout the year), so I’ve been working on training at about 80% so as not to damage the stump. I’ve managed to do classes for the last two weeks without too much trouble, and for the last three weeks I’ve been able to finally get back into the yard as well and work on revamping the garden. Things are definitely looking up!

So, I’m at a good place at the moment. Over the course of my break form training, I also took the opportunity to do some reading on martial arts – I read Patrick and Yuriko McCarthy’s translated works on Gichin Funakoshi and Motobu Choki (regulars will know I’ve mentioned him when referring to Koryu Uchinadi Kenpo-jutsu and the International Ryukyu Karate-jutsu Research Society in the past – you can check out their website here, and read more on the books themselves here), finally read Tom Cleary’s translation of Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings (more info on the translation is at Musashi Miyamoto.com) and a translation of the Hagakure (can’t recall the translator for this one) – Wifey actually bought me those last two as a gift, isn’t she awesome? Down the road I’m planning on writing up something on my impressions of these books so that others interested in them can see some of my thoughts on them, being inspired by the martial arts book reviews section on Black Belt Mama’s website.

There’s been some other stuff happening as well on the injury front, but I’ll save that for another post in order to keep this one a little more focused!

Anywho, expect more regular updates form now on, I promise!

Related posts:

1. Catching up on a few weeks’ worth of training
2. Mangling my leg (again :P)
3. Archive: Better late than never :P

The Rotarua Thermal Mud (aka Magic Mud) came to my rescue (again!) this week – I’ve discussed before how it’s like a piece of awesome in liquid/paste/cream/whatever form (as recently as just over a month ago, actually!), and following this week’s training (particularly the resistance training on the stances), my knee was feeling a bit sore and inflamed. So, as per the usual, I slapped on plenty of mud and gave it a good rub in while watching a classy episode of Thundercats in bed, tried my best to relax my muscles and not sleep in a weird position, and sure enough, it was right as rain the next day.

When I finish this tube of it, I’m definitely going to grab some more (pretty sure Wifey’s found an online store that sells it) – I swear by the stuff, it always works a treat.

Although it might have been the combination of a double-awesome – Thundercats + Magic Mud. Sounds very scientific to me.

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This is an image of my stomach just above the belly button after a short session of iron stomach training – Jyastin-kun has excellent targeting and accuracy considering how many strikes we did and it’s all focused into a single spot! This photo was taken Friday, so by now it’s started going all yellow around the purple/red area and isn’t as painful as it was last week.

I’m not sure what it says about me personally that I find this kind of thing amusing And yes, we all know how attractive my hairy man-belly is

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1. Iron stomach training
2. Archive: I belong to the international order of stupid

… well, rather, don’t observe because I don’t have any impressive images Didn’t go to training last week as I was unable to even remotely form a fist with my right hand, which makes it hard to do all sorts of stuff, and I was afraid of further damage during any grappling or kumite exercises. It’s almost better now, but I’m hesitant to go back to training tomorrow night in case it accidentally re-opens the wound…. hmmmm…

As for what I did? Was really stupid – I was picking something up off the floor in the bathroom, and the knuckle on my thumb knocked into one of the stainless steel containers in the bathroom. Figured all I’d done was a light paper cut, but it turned out that I almost took the top of my knuckle off – hanging by a flap was all this awesome exposed flesh and muscle, looked really gross and stung a bit as I soaked it in crazy Dettol:

For the first week I was changing the dressing daily and working hard to keep it from getting wet – there was a Dettol + Betadine combo on the wound and under the skin flap, couple of band-aids, then thick sports tape holding the thumb straight to try and stop me bending my thumb. It’s now a week and a half later, and I’m down to only having a single band-aid over it and can almost bend it back like normal without it feeling like it’s going to split right open again. I figure by the weekend, it should be back to normal so I can start with some weight training during the week and then back to training.

Considering how it looked and the fact I didn’t get it infected, I will also take this moment to observe I was tapping into my crazy Wolverine healing powers

Stupid thumb

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1. I mangled my thumb :P
2. Mangled stump
3. I mangled my stump dancing to 80s Michael Jackson

Yes, that’s a Sega Astro City. It barely fit through the door, the chassis (the boards the power the tube monitor) blew 4 days after first receiving it, and even after installing a refurbished chassis on the weekend and accidentally blowing that up (note to my fellow nerds – don’t forget to connect that earth cable on your video chassis!!!), I still love it. I think Wifey will come to love it too once I’ve stopped nerding around on it and we can play some old school scrolling fighting games or Moon Patrol together, but we’ll see how that goes.

Anywho, Saturday and Sunday arvo were spent wiring up, testing, and disassembling the chassis, throwing in some extra wiring on the JAMMA adapter for MVS stuff, and swearing profusely at it. This involved all manner of sitting/standing/squatting/storming-off-in-a-huff, and my right leg is well and truly telling me off now.

So this one’s to BBM – I’m totally feeling your pain right now!

What’s making it doubly interesting is that I’m hammering through my second cold in a row, which means my asthma’s flaring up and doing a good leg workout to iron out the kinks is out of the question. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution!

Once again, karate comes in to save the day – I spent about 20 minutes this evening going through all my leg stretches I normally do in class, and then did a couple of dynamic leg lifts afterwards. The end result certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than before!

So there you are – if you’ve done yourself a nerd injury from tinkering with stuff, karate training can help you get back on your feet. Or in my case, foot I’ll hopefully be ready to roll into a good weight training session tomorrow after work, complete with my usual stretches and exercises in prep for next week’s class.

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2. Archive: Stretchy legs

Weirdly enough, it’s Friday, and everything is pretty much healed up.

I iced the thumb on Monday night straight after the injury, woke up Tuesday and it was practically all better, and was back to normal by Wednesday. I should have iced up my left hand on Wednesday night before going to bed, but despite this, I iced it up before and after work yesterday and again before I went to work this morning, and it’s almost back to normal.

Freaky.

I normally take longer to heal up from stuff like this. Hell, even my knee’s been better of late. Not that I’m complaining or anything. Hopefully its a sign I won’t mangle myself as much in the future, or if I do, I’ll bounce back reasonably quickly. I’m like Wolverine, if he suffered from some wussy bruising on his thumbs and stuff, and was a ranga. Hahaha, Wolverine as a ranga – that’s crazy talk.

It was actually Jyastin-kun who coined the Wolverine-healing concept – one time he seriously mangled his hand at work, and he healed up miraculously fast. His doctor, with his broken English, said he was Wolverine. Y’know, because of how fast he healed. I thought that was awesome, so I thought I’d steal the phrase and apply it to me. Because Wolverine is awesome, and the new movie is looking like it might be tip-top. At least it couldn’t be worse than Spider-man 2 or a Schumacher-directed Batman movie.

So yeah, I’ll leave my rant here Might add something worthwhile to this blog shortly!!

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1. Mangled thumb
2. Archive: Getting ready for more training
3. I split my foot

When Wifey and I were honeymooning in New Zealand a few years back, we came across this Deep Heat kinda stuff – it’s called “Therapeutic Mud” or something like that, smells a bit like Deep Heat, but apparently uses the thermal mud from Rotorua in the mix. We picked some up while we were over there as Wifey had mangled her ankles from all the walking around we were doing (though it probably didn’t help that she was wearing boots with massive heels on them from time to time if I remember correctly ), and the stuff worked extremely well. So, a while back I started using the mud on sore muscles – one time after a particularly heavy weights session both my arms seized up overnight and I couldn’t bend them from the elbow. Added some mud, and in a few days they were right as rain, and in the interim it took away the immediate pain I was getting from them. I’ve also noticed it has a beneficial effect on my knee when it gets a bit achy – sometimes I’ll do it as a precaution after a heavy training session, and sometimes I do it if there’s some general aching (like last night). To be honest, I really should have used some after the breakfall training last week as a preventative act, but was feeling lazy when I got home and didn’t. Hopefully I’ll remember to do the right thing next time

I’ve only ever found it in NZ, and when my folks went there in 2007 (or was it last year?), we had them bring back a couple of tubes of the stuff for us. If people are genuinely interested, I’ll take a photo of it and post some details. Like I said, it may be all in my head, but I’ve found it does wonders for me, much better than actual Deep Heat or some of the other anti-inflammatory gels I’ve used in the past.

I should also start making regular trips to the physio to try and keep the knee in good order – I remember when I first started having knee troubles back in 2004 after I fell down the stairs in our townhouse that the improvement was huge after I saw a physio who used a combination of acupuncture and ultrasound (I think it was ultra sound, my memory’s hazy ) on my knee. Ah well, I’m sure one day I’ll get off my behind and start

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2. Archive: Third blog this week!!