Thursday 3 April 2014

Just. Keep. Swimming.

Fracture clinic on Tuesday did at least bring "good" news, in that the cast was removed from my wrist.  I felt rather more mixed about it.  Obviously I was desperate for it to be off and end the 5 weeks out of the water, but it was stiff, swollen, and just entirely overwhelming.  Cast removal is definitely not the end of the recovery process, but only the end of one stage, and there is lots of hard work to be done.  As we left clinic, even tiny knocks were giving me excruciating pain and I started to stress about getting in the pool.  The Dr had said that it was ok, and I need to try to relax/move it, but I was tired and overwhelmed.  After a good hour of tears, I managed to pull myself together and we walked around to the local pool.  I don't usually swim there as it's far too warm/busy, but it was convenient, and I thought the warmth might help for a slow swim.

The good news was it was just about ok.  I started off with some prone kicking, then cautiously some single arm, and then tried full stroke.  It wasn't very elegant, but it was a start.  Mr W timed me over 100m and I got 1:37 which isn't too bad, though it seemed like very hard work.  I swam a total of 500m.

On Wednesday, I walked to my normal pool after work and met up with my friend Claire.  I'd warmed up by the time she got in, so we did some work on body position drills together.  I can't yet do sculling drills, but I thought this was a good area of focus for me.  So, superman, torpedo, and advanced single arm.  Without really trying I covered 1500m in about 40 mins and it was time to get out.

Today being my birthday, I had in my head that if I couldn't be on my swim holiday in Mallorca, then I'd like to try a birthday set of age x 100s.  Usually, I think people complete these as a hard effort, but that wasn't going to be possible for me today.  So I came up with a nice mix of drills and easy efforts and didn't time how long it took me.

Here's what I did:

1. Easy FC
2. Breastroke
3. Easy FC

4. Torpedo drill
5. Superman drill
6. 6-3-6 drill
7. Advanced single arm drill
8. Easy FC
9. Torpedo push off
10. Easy FC
11. Pull
12. Easy FC
13. Kick
14. Easy FC
15. Hard FC
16. Easy FC
17. Open water sighting
18. Easy FC
19. Water polo drill
20. Easy FC
21. Breastroke arms and front crawl legs
22. Easy FC
23. Front crawl arms and fly legs
24. Easy FC
25. Front crawl arms and breastroking legs
26.Easy FC
27. Kick
28. Pull with pullbuoy at ankles
29. Easy FC
30. Breaststroke


After a stressful week, I spent the rest of my birthday in bed.  Ho hum.  At least there was a swimming element to the day as well as a mental health element and I've had some nice messages and kind presents.  Can't decide if feeling very low is preferable to feeling very anxious as it seems to be one or the other for the last few days.

3 comments:

  1. It sounds like it's scary to have your cast off and your arm out in the world again, I would think that the water, being your favourite element, will help that. Hopefully your physio can work in some water exercises for you. And I think swimming on your birthday is a lovely thing to do, and I'm so glad you were able to xx

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  2. It’s definitely going to be a long recovery process. But the good thing about it is that one stage is over. Now you just have to have your wrists get used to movement after being in a cast for so long. Soon enough you’ll be able to have the pleasure of swimming again. :)

    Tiffany Fields @ Pools N More

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  3. Well, that’s progress. Swimming those birthday blues away is a good thing. How are you now? I assume those water exercises worked well for you. I hope your birthday for next year will be entirely different from the last one; with you finally being able to swim without anxiety and feeling low about the fracture. Take care!

    Joanne Henry @ Tranquility Pools, NJ

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