22 December 2006

I thought I'd better update the diary before Christmas, otherwise I'll probably never get around to do it.

I have been home with Lillian all day. The childcare finished yesterday but Tim is still working today. The gym closed from last night as well so I didn't have to get up especially early this morning.

I think my brain is having a pretty good run this week. On Monday, for the first time, I could do a full cycle of scarf juggling. I have been learning this for months from Kate and have been feeling a bit frustrated that I wasn't getting anywhere. For some reason, it suddenly became easier on Monday when I was practising before my juggling lesson with Kate. She was very impressed with the sudden progress. I didn't have the heart to tell her that 'actually, it was sort of the last minute practice before our lesson'. I found it strange that sometimes I could practise for hours during the week and not getting anywhere but suddenly made a big progress in 5 minutes of practice.

My running is getting better all of a sudden as well. I have been a bit frustrated with my running for a while now. I know I should practise more because Gavin is always on my case for not having more practise sessions before I see him. My answer to him is that I can't find an open space to run because I haven't got a lawn at home. He told me I could just go to a park and run but my excuse for not being able to do that is because there are too many people at the park and I feel too self conscious when there are other people around. I know these are really pathetic reasons and I will definitely try to do more running practice in the new year. I did try to go to a small park near our house with Tim a few weeks ago but there were many dogs droppings so I had to keep stopping to avoid stepping on them.

I went to the running group at Epworth on Wednesday. To my surprise, there were so many people turned up on that day. I felt a bit self conscious because they were all running much better than I do, given that their injuries seem more severe that many cannot speak very well and need to have carerer with them, I felt a bit embarrassed. To my surprise, I was running better after a while. It was the first time I felt the push off in my left calf and I was landing on my toes. Even Gavin was saying it looked a lot more automatic. I wonder if it had anything to do with my big workout at the gym that morning and the day before. I had a 2 1/2 hours workout that morning. I think it may have just warmed up all my leg muscles.

The gym classes have finished last week so I could only go to the gym this week. Normally, Tuesdays are my biggest workout day. I would go to BodyPump at 7.30 a.m., gym at 8.30 a.m and then go home have a quick shower and have a quick bite and go to Cardio Box at 12 pm and Fitball class at 1 pm and then go home for physio with Prema at 2.30 pm and then quickly whip up some dinner and go to BodyBalance at 5.45 pm. I know it sounds crazy because how is it possible to attend so many sessions in a day. I think it was eaiser for me when I increased the number of sessions gradually. I didn;t discover BodyBalance and Fitball classes until the second half of the year so it gave me a bit more time to increase the sessions over time.

I think I have to admit that I'm a real addict. Since there were no classes this week, I went to the gym as usual on Tuesday morning. I thought since I didn't have to rush off to the classes, I could just take my time with the workout. I did almost an hour of cardio exercises and then my usual gym program. To finish off, I thought I'd better go through the exercises they do in BodyPump but just using the dumb bells instead of barbells. After a few sets, I still didn't feel I worked enough and I was thinking may be I should do the whole thing (including cardio exercises) all over again until I looked at the time. I got there at 8.30 a.m. but when I looked at the time, it was 11.30 a.m. I couldn't believe I was there for 3 hours. I had to drag myself out of there or I might feel really sorry the next day or 2. When I told Tim about this, he just laughed and said ' you are a total addict!'.

8 December 2006

Well over a month since my last diary entry. I have been so busy and could hardly find time to update the blog lately. It's mainly due to my very busy schedule - apart from working at the office 10 hours a week, I also fit in at least 12 sessions of gym and classes a week and 3 to 4 hours of physio. I have very little 'slack' time if you count all that plus my weekly household chores.

I think I'm still making improvement. I saw the rehab specialist, John Olver, last week and even he noticed that I walk a lot faster since he last saw me about 10 - 12 weeks ago. I know sometimes I get a bit depressed because I feel that rehab is such a slow process and I'm not getting better. I was going through my exercise book the other day and I'm glad I have kept detailed record of my gym sessions and classes because I can look back and see what I was doing. I noticed one big difference in the strength of my legs. Back in January this year, I started with 10 kilos on the 45 degree leg press and now I'm up to 55 kilos. That's 5 times more just less than a year ago.

Last week, Alex, the BodyPump instructor, started playing some of the old release. There is a new release every 3 months but instructors tend to play some of the old ones after a while otherwise people get a bit bored doing the same thing for 3 months. He was playing BodyPump 57 last week and that was the one I started with back in Feburay/March this year. I found this especially interesting because it brought back so much memory. I remember I had a lot of trouble with him at the start because he thought the class wa not suitable for me because it's too hard for me and I might injure myself. I remember I had to ask Gavin to bail me out. 10 months later, I'm still in the class but so much stronger than before. I have quadurpled the weight in the squats track and tripled the weight in the chest and back tracks. Still, I don't find it as hard as when I first started.

One thing I have to mention is that there is somthing that we do in the BodyBalance class that is so funny. I guess funny is really not the word but this is a move in the Tai Chi part of the class that requires bringing the back of your hands together. The reason I mention thisa is because a long way back when Neil and Rosemary were haelping me with my upper limb exercises, they made up all sort of exercises for me. One of the exercises Neil invented was to bring the back of hands together. I couldn't do it back then due to problem with my left shoulder. I remember asking Neil 'why on earth do you need to do that for?' "when do you ever need to put the backs of your hands together?" Obviously, Neil knew that I would need it for the BodyBalance class!

I had an appointment with the occupational physician on Monday morning. I was really nervous about the appointment because I don't know what she'd recommend this time. I thought she would want to increase my hours and this time, I really can't say I'm so tired or I may not have a job to go back to. To my surprise, she thought I was doing well but because I have been doing training and not real work over the last 3 months, it's not indicative how well I'll cope with realistice workload so she recommended that my hours stay the same but that my manager should give me more complex work to see how I cope. I think my prayer has been answered because I have bought myself more time. She set another appointment for me in early February and until then, my hours will stay the same. This is such a relief for me because it means I'll have more time for rehab and exercises.