Some good news, some disappointing news, and a general update on my progress

I had my first out­pa­tient fol­low-up appoint­ment with my neu­ro­sur­geon yes­ter­day. Today marks five weeks since my surgery. I was hop­ing for a lit­tle more relax­ing of restric­tions than the sur­geon ulti­mate­ly allowed, but got more than I expect­ed in oth­er areas, so I’m alto­geth­er OK with that.

I was hop­ing I could get the all-clear to do some light fish­ing, just for the sake of my men­tal health. Not walk-6km-spin­n­ing-for-trout-in-the-moun­­tain-streams lev­el of fish­ing, but just wet­ting a line at the local lake with a mate handy to net it for me if I got lucky and land­ed one. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the answer was a strict no. I’m not ready yet. In fact I was told I’m at the upper lim­it of what I should be doing already and was encour­aged to back it off just a lit­tle. So I’ll obey that, of course: the surgeon’s the boss. But it was still a bum­mer, men­tal­ly. The fish must con­tin­ue to wait for me. Poor lit­tle dar­lings must real­ly be miss­ing me.

Hit the road, Jack!

The one sur­prise I got in return was that I am allowed to dri­ve again. Small lit­tle dri­ves, baby steps. No more than 20 min­utes, just around town, and only when I haven’t tak­en any extra oxy­codone and/or diazepam, of course. But it was still a nice sur­prise — I thought I was still a few weeks’ off — and it means I don’t have to strug­gle with the Bal­larat pub­lic trans­port sys­tem any longer.

The best ben­e­fit, how­ev­er, is I can now very tight­ly and ade­quate­ly con­trol where and when I do my walk­ing. I have been log­ging my walks on Stra­va as Recov­ery Walks; to allow for analy­sis of my progress and to keep on top of dis­tance and dura­tion dur­ing the walk itself so I don’t over­do it. Now that I can dri­ve, I can maybe walk some more inter­est­ing areas and paths with­out get­ting stuck walk­ing too far; for exam­ple, when tak­ing the bus around town one must often walk to/from the near­est bus stop, and this adds a kilo­me­tre or two to my intend­ed distance.

Walking progress

On the sub­ject of progress analy­sis, I’ve been look­ing at how I’ve improved in walk­ing, both in dis­tance and pace. I feel much stronger, I’m walk­ing quick­er and fur­ther, and though the sur­geon warned me to ease it off a lit­tle, I’m feel­ing great in this area of my recovery.

Physio and a return to cycling

I’m still under­tak­ing my dai­ly physio exer­cis­es and have been allowed to engage with a phys­io­ther­a­pist and start work­ing towards get­ting back on the bike in a few months’ time, so that’s also got me look­ing for­ward! The sur­geon del­e­gat­ed the deci­sion for my return to cycling to the phys­io­ther­a­pist, so I’m feel­ing con­fi­dent that if I just keep doing my exer­cis­es and tak­ing it easy, fol­low­ing instruc­tions and keep­ing pos­i­tive, I’ll be rolling down the coun­try roads on Ser­e­na in no time.