Back on skis after hip fracture!

13 months PO

 

Back from ski vacation, safe and sound.

My first run, back on skis again since my ski accident, was a combination of being super happy, feeling overwhelmed with emotions and being very cautious. By the time I reached the lift, I was in tears.

 

This was me before my first run. A bit on the nervous side…

 

Second run went already better and by the afternoon, I skied pretty much like normal. I really could not tell the difference to “before I broke my hip”. Technique wise it was all there and my husband said, I looked just like I always did, which is awesome.

I felt really strong and even getting up from the chair lift, over and over again, was okay. As a matter of fact, I got up better after recovering from a complete hip fracture than I did after recovering from surgery of two labral tears. So I guess all those squats and glutes exercises I have been doing paid off!

 

 

Day 2 was good too, had a great time, but on day 3 reality set in.

The ski resort is at very high altitude and my body does not like high altitude. Just doesn’t. I get sick and get blasting headaches from it, so to prevent this and to be more proactive, I took Ibuprofen throughout the day, which helped nicely with the headaches.

After a few days my body got used to the high altitude and I wanted to cut down on the Ibuprofen. Headaches did not occur but now I felt what my op hip really felt like after a day of skiing, without sugar coating it. Hallelujah!

During skiing I felt a medium ache in my thigh, where the pins were put in and after, my op hip and surrounding muscles were about a 4.5/10. A deep ache which called for my icepack and Ibuprofen. Lasted all through the night.

I could also clearly tell that on day 3 I could not ski as energetic anymore as on the previous days. My legs, muscles and op hip were exhausted and needed a break, so we took one day off to recover and skied two more days after that. On ski day 4 and 5  I did well, with an aftermath of about 3.5/10.

~~~

And of course, what would a ski vacation be without a visit to the clinic for me? (Being sarcastic…) 

I  needed an urgent prescription for antibiotics and had to go back to the clinic where ski patrol dropped me off last year. They still had me in their system, as an “established patient”….

I ended up on the same  examination table and even with the same  ER doctor who told me last time the devastating  sentence “the Xray of your shoulder looks okay but your hip has a fracture.”

Many many memories and thoughts were going through my mind being in there.

~~~

The whole vacation felt like the movie “Groundhog day” anyways,  I did things like last time, saw things like last time and skied runs like last time. I saw ski patrol several times and each time it ran down icecold my spine.

We even went back to where I fell and broke my hip. Did not feel like going closer. No need to jinx anything but I sure remember every single minute of this traumatic day.

 

Right there, next to the stand, it all began.

 

For me it was not necessarily the skiing that was exhausting, it was walking stairs with all the gear and heavy boots on. By the end of the day I had a big limp doing stairs and either had to pull myself up on the reiling and help along or I went back, doing Grannysteps.

 

 

All together, I was  MORE  than pleased with my op hip and ability to ski again. I was really, really happy to be out there again, but it also showed me,  I still need more strength and endurance.

I was not the slowest on the mountain but not the fastest either. I just skied like I always do, making many turns and skiing in control. (I slipped two times for a split second and it freaked me out, otherwise my balance was good.)

That’s all I ever wanted, to be “me” again.

~~~

It’s been a tough year but for being 13 months out, this is a heck of a comeback in my books!

I knew it all would come together at some point and it did not matter that my recovery was slow. What counts is, I did recover. All my workouts and hundreds of hours doing PT have paid off. It was not necessarily the amount of what I did, it was the consistency.