Archive: Better late than never :P
Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 1 March, 2007
It’s been a busy week, so apologies to those who might be interested in the latest news in my end of the world. I meant to write up something earlier on this week, but it’s just been busy, busy, busy. Apologies for that.
Well, my plan for this week’s blog was to fire off some info about what happened when I lost my leg. Not sure if I’ll get the time to get into that, so it might have to wait until next week. I’ve had a couple of other things come up, leg-wise, of late that’s kept me from my usual routine. I’m in the process of having my spare prosthesis put together at the moment, so I’ve been dashing out during my lunch break(s) (or having an extended lunch break!) to head out to get stuff done for it. The reason I have a spare leg built up is due to two reasons: number one, if my primary prosthesis spontaneously combusts (which it does – not literally of course, I mean it in the sense that I have a habit of breaking something at inopportune moments… I’ve got some interesting photos of that, might have to post them up), I have a backup to get around on. Number two, it means I can wrap the knee and ankle on it up in something non-porus and wear it down to the beach if I want to go for a swim/walk/etc. While I don’t swim with the prosthesis on, I can leave it on my towel on the sand and not worry about my primary mode of ‘transport’ getting clogged with sand or grit.
Anywho, the latest is that they have taken a mould of the existing socket on my prosthesis I use all the time, and I’ll be going in to see how it fits on Monday. My previous spare leg (yes, I’ll often refer to my prosthesis as my ‘leg’ – the word “prosthesis” has too many syllables and takes longer to type than ‘leg’, and if I can’t be bothered saying/typing ‘artificial leg’ or ‘fake leg’, I’ll refer to it simply as my ‘leg’ 😛 I’m Australian, we habitually shorten words… I blame it on cultural habit, and certainly not on my own laziness :P) stopped being all that effective when the valve that regulates the air pressure (and thus, the suction) of the socket broke and I couldn’t source a replacement for the particular fitting it used. So, we’re recycling the knee/titanium pole thingo/ankle/foot parts, and are plonking them onto the newly moulded socket. Yay, this is a good thing. The only bugger was that the valve on my current leg ended up getting clogged when the mould was taken, so I had to dash out during another lunch break to go and grab a new one (cheers for Rick and Stephen for helping me, especially if you’re reading this!!)… because the leg would almost literally fall off while I was walking! While this would make for some amusingly comical moments, it wasn’t a particularly practical solution for getting around during the day 😉
So yeah, that’s what’s been keeping me busy. I didn’t end up going to training last night, as I had the day off work on Tuesday to rest my stump – on Monday night I had two sores on the back of my stump that started to bleed, and while it was pretty much all healed up again by Wednesday morning, I didn’t want them to break open again through training, and decided to leave it this week. Not being one to slacken off too much though, following Wifey’s suggestion, I did another weight training session last night to compensate for it, which went really well; I went over Tuesday night too, so that’ll make it twice this week, which I’m really happy with. I’m getting used to the sore muscles post-training, but I think my body’s learning to adjust to the regime and is coping with it really well. It’s only been… three weeks now since I started augmenting my karate training with weights, but I’m really enjoying it and hope to continue working on it in conjunction with karate.
So, between now and next week I’m hoping to work on my leg stretching to really work on delivering some solid kicks next time I go to karate. I might do some work on the punching bag this weekend too, providing it isn’t too hot. I’ll try and squeeze in another blog before my customary early/mid-week entry for next week, and by then I’ll start getting around to telling the story about how I lost my leg. Should be interesting 🙂 Still, we’ll see what happens.
Oh, and before I go, shouts out to the new people I’ve added to my friends list in the last week and a bit, like Mike, Bec, Jen and Megan!
