Recovery Day 2: Numbing of the Mind

Eventually all good things come to an end and reality smacks you in the face like a sock full of quarters. After being cared for and waited on hand and foot for two days, the wife headed back to work today. For me this means I am trapped in the basement with an assortment of sundries and toys. I kind of feel like I am in a pack 'n' play for adults. I have my guitar, television, cel phone, pain killers, muscle relaxants and that's about it.

After being trapped in the basement since Tuesday I geared up for a big adventure after Brandi left for work. I tackled the steps, against the wife's wishes, and my reward was brushing my teeth, shaving and watching a few birds at the feeder the morning. It was some sort of tribal act to regain my independence, I guess. Ryan and Molly brought some Chipotle for lunch, visitors and food. A few more lunch visits like that and I will be on my way to 300 pounds in no time.

Today I entered the mind numbing state of sitting on the couch with my mind slowly adrift from one monotonous and meaningless activity to another. There seems to be little that is actually mentally stimulating. Somewhere between daytime television, email and a few naps, the day ended and Brandi came home. That is my day. The good news is that I have this awesome boot on my right foot that is pretty cool. It's got straps and buckles and renders the foot so lucky to be inside of it totally uselss. I am still accepting fan mail with names for the boot.

Recovery Day 1: Name that Boot

After a decent nights sleep, I awoke this morning with more pain than I had all of yesterday. I can definitely feel the slice in the back of my leg. I have not been able to decrease pain meds or muscle relaxants thus far and today the road back feels looooong. After sitting on my ass for hours on end with my leg in the air I am bored out of my mind. I am only mildly entertained by the throbbing pain mixed with watching Rachel Ray and Martha Stewart on TV.

Last night a few friends stopped by and brought me a delicious quesadilla from the local bar, as they call it: The White Elephant. It was nice to see some folks and watch the hockey game, even thought the Wild lost in OT. My wife has me locked in the basement, as she doesn't want me going up and down the stairs, so I have no idea what's going on above grade in this place.

If anyone knows of anything entertaining to do on the couch, let me know. I am currently searching for the end of the internet and will keep you posted on my progress. I would also like to name the godforsaken boot that I am imprisoned with, so if you have any good ideas, throw them my way.

Under the Knife

Bright and squirrelly this morning I headed in for my date with the scalpel. It seems that everything went really well. The Doc said that some tendons break pretty clean, but mine kind of looked like mop strings." I took it as a compliment, because I'm different and that makes me special. Being special is something to be proud of. A little tidbit I learned in Sunday school or somewhere on of the few times I didn't escape with my friend Kaiser and raise hell stealthily roaming the church under the aliases Fernando and Eugene.......but that's just a digressing story I will attribute to the Percosett.

One of the high points of the day was all the free stuff I scored at the infirmary. After arriving I got to strip my gimp ass naked to dawn the fashion savy robe. I just about bit it trying to get it tied so as not to give a free show to the nurse, but they didn't let me keep that. I did, however get to put on this really sweet stocking for my good leg. I think they probably felt pretty bad for all the attention that my right was getting so it was nice to have them throw a bone to the lefty as it has been the workhorse lately. This high quality textile is a tight white thigh hight that greatly resembles the shooting sleeve worn by your NBA favorites such as Allen Iverson, or Carmello Anthony. I will be calling mine a hobbling sleeve as that fits my mojo better and I'm kind of hoping it helps my already crazy white boy ups that I have.

One of the other fine items included some powder blue socks with space age polymer traction on the bottom. Watch out Five Ten, this stuff could be the next Stealth product. Actually, this is very doubtful. These are the type of item a homeless person gets for their great grandmother for Christmas, but I figure I can roll in the for a few day to test the fashion waters. I'm not sure if I got the mate, so I might not be able to wear them upon regaining my bipedal status.

After surgery I was treated to cuisine of saltine crackers, graham crackers and Sprite. They went with the mini cans of Sprite, of course, just in case I had morphed into a 5 year old during the anesthesia. As for the crackers, well I was about to chew off the other leg in hunger so I hit those pretty hard, I think a Belgian waffle and some bacon would have been a nice gesture after slicing into the back of my leg, but who am I to judge. First the airlines, now the hospitals. We will be lucky if we get food at restaurants soon the way this is going. I was pretty hungry and was starting to wonder if I got a contact hight from the Panama Red the doc was rockin' in the OR, but they assured me this was not the case.

In all fairness, I did have a very good experience. The doctors were good and assured me everything went very well. Thanks to the "candy" they gave me I have been totally pain free the whole time. The only bad news of the day was that they said it would be 6 months until I am 100% from this operation. Even an outdoor rec major can't count those months on one hand, but I will see if I can beat that time line. I'm fairly certain that I will be an extremely motivated PT patient. Peace and love, The Hobbler.

Achilles Tendon

It seems that this blogger has taken a fall from all that is fun in recent days. My Valentine's gift: Rupturing my achilles tendon while teaching racquetball class. So, in the past 5 days I have visited urgent care, ER, foot and ankle specialist, had an MRI, hosted a climbing competiton and will have surgery tomorrow. Do you know what this means? It means that about everything I find fun and exciting will be off the table for months. The final judgment came down this morning when I got the MRI results. "A high grade tear, but not complete. " There are "a few fibers" holding it together right now.

Tomorrow at 7am I am heading in for surgery. Sounds crappy, and it is. Maybe I can make some blog posts while I am rocking some strong painkillers. It sounds like Vicatin is the pill of choice for the pain so that should be interesting. Hopefully I don't Favre on the painkillers. While I am in a pretty foul mood, my wife surely is the biggest loser in this deal. Anyone who has to spend large amounts of time around me, when I can't be active, I certainly do not envy. If you see her, please buy her a drink, I'll pay ya back later. (make sure she doesn't have to drive me anywhere, because without a right foot I am pretty much screwed on the transportation front)

I feasted on Chipotle for my last supper tonight and nothing goes better with eating than some video footage of surgery. Here is a video of the surgery, compliments of Beck. I figure if I eat Chipotle for two meals a day while I'm and invalid I will probably fit in the whale sling that Andy so graciously has offered to buy for me. My friends are always looking out for me.

Super Boulder II

Sunday marked the 2nd annual Super Boulder. A super bowl party with bouldering as it's sidecar......pure genius. This year the fun factor was greatly elevated as it was the inaugural use of the propane deep fryer I received as a Christmas gift from my brother in law. So mixed in with the climbing we managed to consume a lot of fried cheese, a lot of jalapeno poppers, a few fried dill pickles, and 15 pounds of chicken wings. There were only 8 of us, but we ate for 16. The bouldering was hard and we left plenty of routes unfinished. Through extensive research we did learn that eating chicken wings and drinking beer does not increase climbing ability. Consider that information 'the tip of the day!' In the end, a great game and for a bunch of ball sport hating climbers, there was quite a bit of cheering as the Giants ruined the perfect season. Cheers to underdog! Click on the photo for more Super Boulder II images. Photos courtesy of Eneu Photography.

Another benchmark of Super Boulder II is that it marks one year of this blog. Before you go posting your comments, I am well aware that there were several gaps in time. Maybe I'll get them next year......maybe.

Getting My Curl On

Events like I experienced today are exactly what this blog is about. We were given the opportunity to 'learn to curl' by our friends Vinh and Megan. Curling is that unique Winter Olympic sport that we all watch in amazement and wonder, "who in the hell does this stuff, and how did get into the Olympics?" I can't even explain how excited I was to curl. So I will give you what my small brain absorbed and deemed relevant from the day.

First, basically you push off of a rubber block, called the 'hack' and slide down the ice as you release a 40 pound granite 'stone' down the ice aimed at a giant bullseye about 140 feet away. The object is to get as many of your 8 stones close to the center of the bullseye, which is called 'the house' and the center is called 'the button.' You can only score if the stone is within the outermost circle, and only the team closest to the button scores as many points as they have stones inside of their opponents nearest stone. Each round is called an 'end,' similar to an inning in baseball, except far more exciting. It's kind of a shuffleboard meets bocce and putting on ice. As the stone slides down the ice you can 'sweep' it with a broom like device that basically creates friction and heat to help the stone slide more easily down the ice and stop where your team desires. Before I ramble on further, just go to Wikipedia if you really care about the details any more.

Some other interesting curling info to note:

• It is considered polite and 'necessary' to have a drink with the opponent after each game.
• The sport gets it's name because you put a slight amount of rotation on the stone as you throw it so it will curl left or right to hit other stones or curve around blocking stones to get to the center of the house. Sort of like a draw or fade in golf.
• A curling event, or tournament is called a Bonspiel, which I am pretty sure means tournament in Scottish.
  
• The ice is 'pebbled' to give it a slightly bumpy texture which aides in the ability of the stones to curl.
• Curling all day is far more tiring than I expected.
• Curling is far more about drinking than I expected.
  
• Stretching out in the crazy throwing position will likely render my leg extremely sore or unusable tomorrow.

I have to put this on the list of one of the most entertaining things I have ever done. It's an awesome sport that combines coordination, strategy, teamwork and gamesmanship all into one. I would highly recommend it to anyone. If I could just learn to luge. Click here to view more curling photos from the day.

It's colder than ________________!!!

When the windchill is -41, it's time for a weather related post. The average 'celebrate winter' activity is pretty much out, since you would freeze your face to a can of beer if you were to drink in your yard or something. As a result I came up with a few funtivities for extreme winter cold:

1. Wear dress pants to work and you will be able to simulate what it feels like to walk down the street with no pants on. As a disclaimer, actually walking around without pants may get you arrested and the staff at Adventures of Mitch can assume no liability for this.

2. Fill a container with very hot water and tell your friend you will go outside and throw it in the air over your head. Fun trick. The water will turn to snow when it hits the cold and what doesn't will freeze into a block of ice and hit you in the head. At least you are not wet. Again, no liability assumed.

3. Work on your fake cry and see how fast the tears freeze to your cheeks and eylashes. Option 2 would have you do something that actually makes you cry, but is usually far less fun.

4. Exercise your vocabulary to fill in the blank for this posting title, so as you see people throughout the day your are not the complete frozen brained idiot stating the obvious when you say, "golly, it's a cold one out there today, eh?" Some suggestions: It's colder than..........a) trading Johan Santana for a bunch of guys nobody has ever heard of, 2) the packer fans after Bret Favre threw and interception in overtime, 4) the tears that fall from Terrell Owens' eyes after he loses.........I could go on, but likely nobody will be entertained.