Keep me motivated

[roadkillbunny]

Just under 5 weeks ago (will be 5 weeks on Wednesday) I had an klutz moment and forgot the number one principle of riding, keep the horse between you and the ground. When the horse I was riding saw a horse eating pony go into thew stalls the great big pansy took a massive leap left, I being a total plank went to the right, left through the emergency exit and landed feet first, this is a tendency you would think I had learned m lesson for having shattered my right ankle the last time a horse and I parted company some 15 years ago but it seem I really need a point driven home! It seems I do have some survival instincts and instinctively protected my right ankle as a further injury would be catastrophic however this threw my left leg to the metaphoric wolves and resulted in me breaking my left ankle in three places, the fibula in one place and the tibia in two places.
I departed the yard in the back of a brand new ambulance on it's first ever run (boy were the paramedics chuffed with the mud and the chance to see how it handled off road!) puffing on gas and air like tomorrow would never come and then spent a week in hospital having pins and plates put in to hold my leg/ankle together again being rather ill partly due to complications with the break and partly due to complications from my already complected health.
The prognosis is good now (thank goodness) and I only have 9 days of my 6 weeks non weight baring left, a time that has been extremely difficult due to my talent when it comes to all things medical of never being straight forward. My current record for managing on crutches is 10 hops and I have been working very hard to achieve that has left me in a wheelchair, trapped downstairs in a house that was not built with wheelchairs in mind, the bathroom is upstairs and I am unable to get in and out the house without help. Luckily my friends, clients (most of my clients are friends, if they weren't before, they are now!) and my lovely village community have stepped up and looked after me and my 2 children (3.11 and 6.8 years old) while my dh is at work as having lost my income (I am a groom in the very early stages of self employed so had nothing in place for this kind of thing, when I fully launch I will do that's for sure!) we can not afford for him to take anymore time off, the week I was in hospital he was off and we simply can't afford any more.
So, to get to the point of the thread, On Wednesday I am able to start very limited physiotherapy and a week tomorrow I should, as long as my x-ray is okay, get a weight baring cast fitted (cast number 8, woohoo!) which will allow me to start the long hard process of getting me on my feet and walking again. I don't know how much longer I will be in a cast, the consultant told me 3 months just after the injury but I am hoping to get myself walking quicker, even if it's a weeks quicker, I love proving doctors wrong (you will never have children unassisted, check and you will never walk unaided again after the ankle shatter, check on that one two to name just a couple of biggies)!
It is really going to be a slog, it is going to hurt and there will be times I just want to give up so I need a place I can record my achievements to look back on when things are rubbish and in those rubbish times a place I can get a kick up the bottom to re motivate me! All my clients are very keen to have me back, their are some jobs will be able to go back to before others and one of my friends/client has her yard a 5 min walk away (pre idiot leap) and I will be able to go potter on er yard to build myself up.
Riding wise it is going to take longer as joke as I may I think I may have lost my nerve as well as my dignity that day. I have a pony available to me that I can squish for my first time back and then a 14.2 that will suit very well for getting back to being further from the ground but I fear I am going to need many, many kicks up the bottom to get me on even those two.
So, sorry for boring you with epic post, need a vent place and a great deal of encouragement, I have had some terribly low days. Any stories of people getting back after similar things would be good and anyone with two damaged as hell ankles who ride would be jumped on with questions like is it really safe of advisable to be riding with only half the bone left in one ankle and the other held together with metal work?

full of typos, I blame the drugs and lack of lap for laptop...

Oof, you have been through it haven't you. FWIW, I'm back riding after an riding accident squashed my left wrist and mangled other bits of my arm, resulting in no use of that arm now. Am still v nervous, but plan to have some schoolmaster lunge lessons soon to let me sort out some of the mental sticking points without being able to blame it on my hand

Good luck! I did something similar skiing, not quite as bad, but I had two operations and 12 months recovery time - just got to take each day as it comes, stick to your physio routine and keep posting! I remember times just sitting on the floor in tears because it was so frustrating, and painful but you get through it. You can do it, and you will do it!

Wow you have been through the wars. But your doing great and can do this! My pelvis cracked during my first pregnancy so my hips are held together with pins, rods and as my dr puts it a hope and a prayer but I ride because I and ds's love it the fear of falling is outweighed by my desire to not give in and have fun with my children. Good luck please keep us posted

Thank you all for the words of encouragement and stories of coming through the other side of bed injuries.
In the first two weeks after the accident when people asked if I would ride again I just didn't know, inside I actually felt that I wouldn't, I was determined to get back to work, would never leave horses but in that time I just didn't think I had it in me to get back up in the saddle however just over 2 weeks after the accident somebody who I don't know well asked me and I replied yes without even thinking and it was then that I knew I would ride again even if it may take some time, in the weeks since then that determined has just increased with every passing day. Before I shattered my right ankle those 15 years ago I had a very promising up and coming career showjumping but when I had that accident (a really stupid fall when my pony dropped her shoulder and ducked out of a fence due to me mucking with her stride too much to get through I really badly spaced double at a poxy livery yard show I had only gone to to prove a point) I was told I might never walk again unaided, it took nearly 18 months but I did, I was in casts and splints the whole time in splints and casts. I had 5 horses on a complex set up of competition, bringing on, breaking and pre-breaking loan. I did all the care and work but all costs were paid by the owners. Due to the length of time I was out and the fact the injury meant my competitive riding career was over I lost my horses. It was a very painful time both physically and emotionally, I was not only abandoned by the so called horse community around me but it some cases I was turned on when I was unable to defend myself. The situation now couldn't be any more different but in being so different, supportive, understanding and caring it has in a way re opened those old wounds, back then I was a very vulnerable 18 year old who had lost her Dad only a year before, I was unable to cope with what happened properly, my Mum did her best but it was just her, everybody else turned there back. I have come a long way from being that girl, I am now more able to cope with things like that, handle things better but it is now that I get such wonderful loving care. I am probably not making much sense when I say that is painful.
That's enough of my tails of woe for now though, got to pull myself together, this injury while more outwardly dramatic is no where near as bad, I should in time with work, allot of painful work make a good recovery it is just the time and the hard work bit that gets me down and frustrated!

And here's me complaining of concussion, whiplash and compressed discs! Well done you for keeping going in the face of such a difficult time. I would suggest you go with the flow, don't force anything and if you don't feel able to continue then don't - it has to be your decision alone, and don't let people put you off when you do want to get back on.

Even after my recent whoopsie I had non horsey friends saying I was "mad", "risking my life" and "irresponsible" for getting back on - they just don't get it at all, and I have given up trying to explain. The horse that I fell off and hurt myself from wasn't mine which helped when I got back on him, but I was still surprisingly anxious after what was really only a minor fall - the problem is the older you are the less you bounce!

If you want to get back on then do, and if you don't then don't, but don't put pressure on yourself, and don't let anyone pressure you either.

Thanks Frosty, back injuries are no fun at all and you are fully entitled to have a complain, I am very lucky in that the rest of my body may be screwed but I have the back of an ox! There was a girl in the bed opposite me in hospital, funnily enough she was also a groom (although worked for top event yards, while she was in she was head hunted by an eventing institution so way out of my league!), she had broken her coccyx and when I left hospital after a week she was still there, flat on her back and by then had been for 10 days. She will have a quicker recovery then me but boy, I wouldn't want to have changed places!

% weeks today since the accident and had my physio assessment today, I am really pleased by it, my left leg is stupid wasted and I have the most uneven bum known to man I think but we were all pleased at what I was able to achieve with the exercises to build the leg up again. The joint is almost completely locked still and until hospital and new x-ray next week still no weight baring of course but all in all I don't seem to be doing to badly. I really liked my physio and luckily she will stay as my physio from now on, she is really nice, gives good clear instructions, can take a joke and very importantly, however much it can bring you down at times, she is realistic. It will likely be a year until I can be back to my level of fitness I was before and there is no way of knowing how much movement I will regain in the joint (however the heal down is looking to be very good already so plus point for riding lol!), I knew these things but she is the first medical professional to come straight out with it, however upsetting it can be and was to hear I appreciate and value her realistic and frank assessment. The one thing that was a bit of a disappointing surprise was in regard to driving, I don't have a car right now but will be getting one in September when I fully launch myself as a self employed freelance groom (the work I do/did now is all in my village) but on telling her this she was skeptical I would be able to drive by then, I told her that as I hadn't got a car yet that if it was looking to be that way I would just get an automatic, she was happy with that!

The physio has taken it out of me and even though I have only done half of what will be my daily physio routine today I feel like I have worked a 12 hour day on the yard in winter on show prep day! I ache so much but even though that is also translating to extra pain it is god, I finally feel like I am doing something, I have been doing as much as I could with exercises to keep my legs going from the start but now having the specificity targeted ones it feels like I am finally moving forwards when I have been sitting still for that past five weeks, hurahh! Just got to keep the physio up twice a day, get fitter again, increase the physio to 3 times a day, get more mobile and on my feet and push on through!

Today was a good day with a little bit of sobering reality shoved in the heady mix!

Just to add I have put some pictures on my profile and I warn that after the first 3 pics that are x-rays you have the more graphic surgical and fracture blister wounds, I don't find them gory but I know some might so just a heads up if you are going to look!

Physio is knackering and tedious - I had it after my shoulder operation (horse related fall of course), but you have to stick at it. I wasn't very good at doing my exercises after the 1st op, but much more diligent after the 2nd and really noticed the difference. Don't rule out the occasional therapeutic massage either, sometimes it's nice just to be touched gently rather than poked and prodded!

Those photos are impressive - you've gone through a lot already so to be as cheerful as you are, you're doing really well.

Good morning!
It is now just over 7 weeks since my 'throwing myself from a horse' indecent and last week I came out of the full time cast and now have 'das boot' a soft boot with a huge heavy exoskeleton and sole. I wear das boot when ever I am going out, I am starting to put some weight through the leg, just a tiny bit right now and I am still non weight baring at home without the boot. I have six weeks (five now as got it last week) with the boot, at the end of that five weeks (10th of April is when I am back at the hospital) I will still be non weight baring without the boot but will hopefully be at 50% with the boot. When the boot goes at the end of this 6 week section I will then be weight baring with no cast or boot for support and will gradually work up to full weight baring, so first with two sticks then one until finally, I will be walking without sticks, woohoo! They haven't given any kind of time scale for losing the sticks but I am hoping that by say, mid May I will be rid of them!

So, still in a wheelchair as still can't get far on sticks although with now being able to put my leg to the ground and take a tiny bit of weight I am geting more able, it is just a pain that living on the very edge of the village the walk up to the village hall for pre-school and activities and also the walk to school is just too far for me to make but I now take sticks with me every time I go out and do a bit of the way out of the chair. On the (many) days I can't get out at all I take a walk round the close on sticks as I can now get myself out of the house (but not back in it lol!).

This week has also brought me back to doing a bit of work, I am a tack cleaning and rug mending service right now and it is really helping me stay positive and feel better, it is no money spinner but every penny counts and by doing some of it for free for my friends/clients who have been such a help makes me feel a bit less like I am all take, take, take from them!

Last of all physio is going well, it is a long road to go down as I have lost almost all of the muscle in the leg, I have one leg massively thinner then the other and one bun cheek hugely smaller then the other! My uneven bum is a source of great mirth for me and those around me but physio is slowly evening me back up! I have also had wastage on the other leg but not nearly so bad, wont take as long to get that back and the bright note is I now fit in a small width pair of long boots that before I couldn't get on!

Although at this moment I am feeling quite bright I am still having the very down moments and days when just giving up seems like a sound option especially as I have managed to pick up a cold and cough bug from the children and then there is the fact that my baby boy, my last baby turns 4 on Monday and due to being passed from pillar to post lately would rather be with anyone but me, I know that in reality he still loves and wants to be with me but when he is throwing a paddy and crying for my neighbour it hurts, quite a lot actually.