Baby steps, or not-steps...

So, I've started making a proper effort at getting back into something resembling shape.

It's really driving home to me how self-reinforcing injury can be.

For three months, I couldn't put weight on one leg at all, and being on my other foot moving around represented a high-risk scenario for serious further injury, so I avoided it as much as possible.

I got back to the point where I could walk around the house, somewhat, but then I sort of stalled. Getting sick here and there didn't help, depression doesn't help, but ultimately it boils down to this: spend enough time immobile, and standing, walking, anything, becomes incredibly difficult and painful.

I feel shame to admit this, but at the moment, I literally can't stand up for more than a couple of minutes, tops, without something to lean against. I start experiencing pain all over - my back, my abdomen, and my ankle are the worst.

I can walk on a flat surface barefoot, but wearing shoes, or walking on any kind of slope, gives me ankle pain within a few steps, generally. Which makes me want to avoid it, which means... it doesn't change.

So I'm working on it. I've started going for walks with my housemates - short walks, so far, but walks, outside, where the street outside has a slope enough to work the muscles that a flat floor doesn't. I'm making a point to stay on my feet a little extra, any time I get up, to work on all my standing-up muscles.

It's harder than it should be. And it's sometimes disconcerting. Take standing on tiptoe, a not-at-all weird activity I didn't think twice about before I broke my ankle. On my right foot, which retained all the strength plus some thanks to doing the work of two for several months, it doesn't cause me any issues. I can stand on my toes, even on one foot, until I either overbalance or my calf starts to cramp. (Static muscle work is still static muscle work, after all.)

On my left foot? Not only does it still feel like effort, but I get *out of breath*. That is a weird and disconcerting thing, because it just feels like it shouldn't happen. I don't feel like "standing on my toes" should qualify as that much exertion, and yet, for my left ankle, it totally does.

But the point is, it's a start. I will get back to the point where so long as I can maintain my natural pace, I can walk all day without a problem. I will get back to the point where the limit to how long I can comfortably stand around is defined by when my feet get tired, not by when the rest of my body gets tired of supporting itself.

Hell, I will get back to the point where I can walk at my natural pace, where the muscles in my left leg and ankle can support the stride I once had. I still walk timidly, taking careful steps half the length of what my steps used to be.

I WILL WALK LIKE A GROWNUP AGAIN.

... heh.

Reading something about Munchausen by Internet; was struck by something. One of the tell-tale signs is supposed to be that posts about Major Traumatic Events can be made by supposedly-other people with similar writing styles.

My first thought: "You know, when I broke my ankle, velithya made posts about it on my journal for me. And she does so in a way that could be seen as superficially similar to my own writing style..."

NO-ONE THINKS ONE OF US IS A SOCKPUPPET RIGHT

Of course, you probably want to go with more than one sign of :fraud:. And if we were sockpuppeting, it would require quite the spectacular network of sockpuppets, up to and including setting up some complicated internet hostmasking, since, say, flamebyrd knows both of us IRL and would have to be a sockpuppet too and has been posting for some time from Canada. As would all the other people who've met more than one of us. Or... you get the idea. And this planned trip where both of us go to a con would be an interesting trick to pull off.

I'd like to think no-one actually considered there was any other possibility than, "I was injured in hospital, and we live together so she was definitely among the first to know, and also has access to my laptop," but you know, it's people like us who make the Munchausen by Internet people plausible, clearly.

I don't know if I even have a point here.