This will likely come across as a bit of a pity party but it's really not.
Here's the update after a week.
As noted previously, I took the dressing off and it's fairly obvious why my back is hurting. I have a 4" square area in my back that's a beautiful black and blue. The first 2-3 days after the surgery the wound itself hurt but now it's back to "normal" back pain with some amount of sciatica. It doesn't take much at all to provoke either e.g., bending at the waist slightly to get in/out of the car and it really hurts when I do that.
I'm trying really hard to be the "model" patient and follow the post-surgical advice which is:
- No lifting over 10 pounds.
- No bending or twisting.
- No aerobic activity.
- Walk 3x daily.
Have you ever tried not to bend at the waist? I mean seriously, it's really hard! I find myself doing it without even thinking about it. Bending down to scratch my ankle, drop something and bend to pick it up, etc. I've spent my whole life bending at the waist and it's really hard to just stop. I'm doing my best though because doing it really makes my back hurt.
My first walk post surgery I did too much (2 miles) and really paid for it. Went full on narcotics the next day to deal with the pain. Since then, I've been trying to wean myself off the narcotics. At first, this was ibuprofen during the day with the hard stuff in the evening so I could sleep. I've now (today) tried to go "cold turkey" but it didn't go particularly well. Mid-day after a two mile walk my back was really hurting so I did an ice pack and took an ibuprofen.
It's been surprising to me how little I'm able to walk without pain and how much my back hurts. I was expecting 2-5 days of pain but we're at 8 days now and it still hurts quite a bit and takes nothing to invoke both back and sciatic pain. I'm hoping this is residual to the surgery and will fade with time.
On to the pity party.
I'm bored. I mean really bored. To put this into perspective, I've ridden 10K miles or more every single year for a long, long time. That's 200+ miles per week average. That's 50 miles at least 4 days or more usually 40 miles 5 days per week. That's 3-4 hours on the bike, 5 days a week. My normal day is get up, have something to eat, head out to ride for 2-5 hours, come back, stretch/exercise, shower, eat and lo and behold it's 14:00. My big problem in the past has been there's so little time left in the day that it's hard to do more than one other thing each day.
But now, I've got gobs of time on my hands and I'm physically unable to do much of anything. It's rather amazing how limiting my post-surgical restrictions are.
So I get up in the morning and I've literally got nothing to do all day.
I've been doing a bunch of small chores - sharpening drill bits, sorting inner tubes, straightening up the work bench, stuff like that. The thing is though there's only so much of that to do. I've also been doing a lot of reading. I'm starting to play piano a bit. On this note (see what I did there?) I really suck. I always say "there's nothing worse than a remembered skill" and boy is it true. I used to play Rachmaninoff, now I play chopsticks. Badly. I honestly don't know if I'll be able to stick with it but it's something to do.
For your listening pleasure, here's me playing BITD. It's ironic that it's kind of a New Age piece and I mostly played classical but I heard it somewhere, liked it enough to buy the sheet music and record it. Note that I couldn't play this again now to save my life:
For reference, this was recorded on my Mason & Hamlin BB which I hardly ever touch now. I sit down and play a few scales (badly), am disgusted and get up after a few minutes. Part of the problem is I have serious damage to my left hand from a bike accident (what else?) at the Taste of Carolina in 2013. I fell on a wet steel grated bridge, broke both of my thumbs and did ligament damage to my ring finger and thumb in my left hand so I have no stretch in that hand (I used to be able to play a clean 10th) nor do I have any strength in it. Regular readers will also recall I've got issues with both hands from nerve impingement in my neck.
I'm hoping that three weeks post surgery (which, bear in mind, is 2 weeks away), I'll be able to ride the recumbent on the trainer. My wife and the surgeon had a discussion about this post surgery and TBH, he wasn't too warm for the idea. I think he's got a bit of a misconception about the position on the recumbent so my plan is to do a rigorous self-assessment in two weeks and, if I feel I'm able, do easy spinning on the recumbent on the trainer.
My hope after then is that I can ride the recumbent on the trainer and perhaps the DF in a full upright position from 3-6 weeks post surgery then go in for my follow-up at which point I'll be cleared (hopefully) to ride on the roads. I hope to be able to get a bit of riding in on the DF before the weather goes to hell. This will be mid-October so it should be possible to get 4-6 weeks of riding in outdoors.
Stay tuned!
