Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Busted shoulder & Millie the Italian Greyhound

Millie the Italian Greyhound did not bust my shoulder. I did that all by myself at Tony's birthday hockey party. I was shakin and bakin around Dave (successfully surprisingly) when I hit a tar strip and my skates stopped. The rest of me kept flying. Literally according to Tony. I took some air. My highly trained reaction skills from karate are to roll into a fall. I've done it successfully before. I think I had a little too much speed though. Another inch around and I would have rolled off my shoulder blades and been non-the-wiser to the miseries of broken bones (have never broken anything before this).


From what I've been told broken bones hurt less. I fractured my humerus and had a 3rd degree or complete tear in my AC joint. That means I tore the whole joint through. Ya, it hurts as bad as it sounds. It hurts bad enough to say all the swears I've ever heard in the church parking lot. I said things I don't say. I was as surprised as everyone else.

Anyhow, I didn't have to have surgery cause the bones stayed where they were supposed to. I'll be in a splint for 3-7 more weeks. I am finally getting some mobility back. I can lift my arm almost shoulder height. Very slowly. I'm trying to stop taking the pain killers too.
The day after the accident I was supposed to pick up my adopted dog. She came from a puppy mill that was shut down (a sort of mass producing breeder, generally dogs are not taken care of like they should be). I think she was quite neglected and lived most of her life in a kennel based on some behaviors I've noticed. Also, her teeth were so rotted that the rescue group had to have almost all of them pulled. She also had some tumors removed.
She is adjusting pretty good. We've got the "ladies don't eat poop" rule down pretty good. My mother is a saint. Not only did she take care of me over a week, but she let me pick up my dog and helped with her too. However, when we got home home, she has had a couple of accidents (#2) in the house. I think it might be in part from the stress of a 2nd move.
She spends most of the day sleeping while I work. I take her out for short walks and one long walk everyday to keep her active. She seems to enjoy that.
I feed her a corn cob probably for the first time. She looked at it very warily and finally licked it. She loved it. She gnawed and licked it forever.
Her tongue hangs out when she's relaxed. I don't know if it's because there are no teeth to stop it or what, but it cracks me up. I call her tonguey when I see it.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

1/4 the way there

I just finished my first semester back at school. I am 1/4 of the way through my fit tech degree and yoga instructor certification. I love school but it does take a lot of time. I would much do either school or work part time (preferably work) but that's not really an option.

The highlights of the term. I really liked my assessment class. I've been assessing friends and family the past couple of weeks. I also enjoyed coming up with program designs based on those assessments. I don't know how good I am at planning them but it's like a puzzle. I like it. I also felt a lot of validation for the time and money I'm spending when I taught my twists series in the yoga class. I really, really enjoyed doing it and I think I did a decent job. I got good feedback from my peers anyhow.

If you thought I was bad about constantly talking about health and fitness before, I warn you, it will be even worse now. There's nothing quite so dangerous as being armed with knowledge.