It's been awhile

Warm up

It's been awhile since I have posted. I will try to bring you up to speed.

Main Set
August of 2011, I hurt my hip.

A few days later I had my 3^rd surgery on my stomach.

A few weeks after above surgery, I went to my orthopedic surgeon since my hip was still hurting.

7 weeks after my 3^rd surgery, I shot my best round of golf ever, a 71 (-1).

On 11-11-11, I had my 4^th surgery. It was to repair a plastic part in my hip that had worn out. It was a pretty simple procedure. They cut my hip open. Dislocated my hip. Pulled out the worn part. Replaced with new part. Put hip back in place. Stapled me shut. All in all it was a 75 min surgery. Surgery was on a Friday afternoon. I was home from hospital on Sunday and went to work on Monday.

But as the case has been with me, there was a slight surprise when he opened me up. What he originally thought was muscular pain in my hip was actually a fracture in my femur near the implant. My surgeon did his best to fix the break and bone erosion with grafting material. The down side to having a broken leg is that I had to give it time to heal. I was on a crutch for 8 weeks. No exercising, no normal walking, etc for 8 weeks.

Fast forward to now. I am doing well. I am extremely out of shape but working at getting back into my exercise routines. My restrictions were lifted 10 days ago. I have started swimming my usual 3x/week. I try to ride my stationary bike 2x/week. And I am working on my overall leg and core strength. It feels good to get back in my routine.

Cool Down

It’s been a long road since the end of August. However I was able to keep busy doing some things I love. To get me out of the house and try to do some walking after my August surgery, I would go the Leo Girls Soccer games and shoot an amazing player (Katie Pannabecker) and her team. I have told others, now I am telling you, that seeing a game through a camera lens is much different than watching the game. You see detailed concentration, triumph and agony. Katie’s team had an amazing run going undefeated during the regular season and lost their only game at Semi-state. I told Katie that she had a huge impact on my rehab. Looking forward to her games gave me something to focus on other than my health. Being at her games allowed me to take my focus off my recovery and focus on getting that one great shot.

Similar to taking soccer photos and after my hip surgery I am in my second year of shooting the Churubusco Lady Eagles basketball team. A good friend of mine is the Varsity coach. Hobbling along the sidelines and attending games gave me a great escape.

The last thing that kept me busy was still attending as many master swim practices as I could. I wanted to stay connected with my group and keep my routine of getting up at 5am going. Also during my non-swim time I was able to help two people improve their swimming. One was a distant runner who wanted to cross train in the pool for a few weeks. He really made improvement over the weeks we worked together. The other is a great guy named Scott. For years, Scott has swum beside our group. He is always the first one in the parking lot reading his paper until the doors open.  He would get in his lane, swim for 30 minutes and get out. During my rehab we started to talk about what our team does and he wanted to try to do some of our workouts. So I started to work with him – on this stroke, his kicking, and introducing him to new drills and equipment we use in our training. Scott really has excelled and now swims for 45-60 minutes. He loves the variety of the workouts and reports he is now in better shape. As Paul Harvey would say, now here is the rest of the story. Scott is in his 70’s. How cool is that?

I have had my share of “woe is me” moments over the last 2 years. But I have found that when I invest in others my ‘woes’ go away. I still have to do the work to get me back in shape and healthy but sometimes that becomes overwhelming. I have found that helping others takes the focus off of me and my issues. You may have work issues, health issues, family issues or just in the annual winter funk. So if you suffer from the ‘woes’, go help someone else, it might just help!