Climbing my personal Everest
Rehab milestones and a (sort of) return to painting
I feel like I’m in the cheesy training montage part of my recovery. It’s the part of the movie where the hero is so close to their ultimate third-act goal, and they just need to do the work. They run back and forth up a flight of stairs. They repeat the same dance step on an empty stage. They punch a weighted bag over and over and over again.
In my case, attending physio… a lot of gruelling physio.
Now that I’m sitting up in the wheelchair, the goal is for me to regain the strength to transfer into the chair independently.
Once I can transfer, I can go home.
After over eight months in the hospital, however, my muscles need to be strengthened from practically zero. A couple weeks ago, when I first got in the wheelchair, I could barely hold my head up for extended periods without my neck getting sore. These days, I spend a lot of time on exercises to strengthen the muscles required to get from lying down into a sitting position.
I can frequently be heard making mini Hulk-like roars as I try to haul myself up, bracing against my helper’s arms, or shuffle my bum forward an inch at a time. My physios assure me that I am making rapid progress, but it is hard not to be discouraged sometimes.
Last Wednesday, we were all ecstatic when I was able to lever myself up into a seated position with minimal assistance.
Two days later, the pain in my leg was too much for me to sit at physio at all.
After my morning physio session, I return to my room exhausted. I will often lie in bed resting all afternoon, listening to an audiobook and rebuilding my energy reserves. If I’m lucky, I’ll have enough in the tank by the evening to get put in the wheelchair again. The goal is for two of these wheelchair sessions a day, although I am still struggling to sit in the chair for more than 40 minutes to an hour at a time before pain and fatigue drive me back into bed. Compare this to the 16 hours a day that I would typically spend in my chair before the fracture.
Even these brief windows of independence are worth it. The staff were initially surprised that I was motoring myself down to my morning physio appointments as opposed to being taken there by a porter like most folks. In the evening, I roam about the hospital by myself—sometimes grabbing a cookie at the café or wandering about the gift shop—just for the simple thrill of doing things by myself again.
One of the first questions I asked once I got back in the wheelchair was… can I paint?
I haven’t been able to paint since I got to the hospital and I’ve been missing it fiercely. I started with a very simple kid’s paint-by-number kit that I finished so quickly that I began embellishing it for lack of anything better to do.
Thankfully, my adult paint-by-number mini kits arrived in the mail from Craftoria this past weekend, and they felt much more my speed. While it isn’t the same as creating an original painting, I get so much peace from the simple act of painting, and it feels so satisfying as the image emerges bit by bit as the colours are placed.
By the way, if you’re interested in exploring paint-by-numbers yourself, I wrote an extensive paint-by-number tips and tricks guide for our other Substack, Tilted Windmills.
Regardless, progress is progress—however slow it might be. Little wins like getting into the wheelchair each day and even putting on regular clothes again all add up.
Like my paint-by-number, the picture is coming together piece by painstaking piece.
(ps. As a way to foster our more playful creative impulses, Stefan and I just started a new Instagram account together called twplaybox. Feel free to check it out!)