hitting the wall of immesurable steps

I feel like I've hit a wall. I've made a lot of progress up until this point - the scooter is gone, the crutches are gone, the boot is gone...I take showers, I do cook and do dishes...I've become basically functional. Basically. And now it's time for the next steps.

The problem is, the next steps are nowhere near as measurable as the first ones. In order to walk fluidly and exercise and do normal people stuff, I have to gain strength, gain flexibility, agility...get all the stuff back that I've lost since the surgery. The progress on this stuff is not easily monitored. So I do my exercises every day, sometimes they make me feel flexible and sometimes they make me feel sore and swollen. That fucking screw is still sticking out of my ankle - perhaps even more so now - and I wonder if all of this hardware is going to have to come out...if I'm going to need ANOTHER surgery...that unknown puts me in a major funk.

I start a job in 2 weeks, am I gonna be able to drive? Am I gonna be able to walk from the parking lot to the building comfortably? How will I know when I can? What level of flexibility and strength and agility is NORMAL? WHAT THE FUCK IS NORMAL???? Am I making progress? WHAT THE FUCK DOES PROGRESS LOOK LIKE? And so on and so forth...

I'm sick of thinking about it, I'm sick of caring - I don't want to think about how bendy my ankle is today, if it's gonna hurt when I step out of bed or do I need to massage it first? I don't want to wonder if my compression sock is actually working or if it's bad that I didn't ice today. I want to think about fun normal people things - like white supremacy in the legal system and overdose and political/religious/economic turmoil and everything that's been in the news recently. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?? Does my ankle REALLY need to over-shadow that???!!!

In other news, I bought a car I can't drive yet.

But I CAN stand next to it without crutches, so I guess that's a step...

on progress...

Progress is a bitch, man. In some ways I get it - there are certain measurable variables that get better with time. But in other ways, when you're living day after day after day - counting each one while waiting for the next, crossing your fingers that maybe in that window you'll have experienced some of this so-called "progress" - you start to forget what it all really means.

Here is something I have been able to measure: the first major PT goal was to be able to flex my foot back to 90 degrees - meaning my toes were vertically aligned with my heel, forming a 90 degree angle with my shin. To achieve this, we've focused on stretching, massaging, and range of motion (ROM) exercises. In 3 weeks, flexing as far back as I can, I've gone from -15 degrees, to -5 degrees, to 0 (aka neutral, or 90 degrees). This is a good thing, and is necessary to start weight-bearing. PROGRESS.

But then there's stuff like this:

The image on the left is what happens when I try to get on all-four's without the pillow. I have VERY LITTLE flexibility in the front of my ankle and top of my foot. The image on the right is when I try to do a regular downward dog (well I should say this is what WOULD happen if I tried to do a downward dog - that's a position I'm not even attempting right now, the photo is just to demonstrate). Only the pads of my toes can touch the mat, and I can't even fathom sinking any weight through my heel.

My ankle is LOCKED. And where there aren't numbers involved, it's terribly hard to gauge the progress. Sure I'm better on the crutches, I'm not bath-bound, I don't constantly feel like shit, I can do a bit of yoga - though it looks and feels nothing like actual yoga. I'm still in bed most of the day, I'm still taking a shower on a chair (yes, the backs of my thighs are completely unshavable), I'm still not really socializing (thanks again for all the buddies who are going out of their ways to come to me!), I still can't sleep on my right side...all of these things make it really difficult to get a shitload of joy from 5 degrees of range of motion.

So I muster up a little fake joy when I can, hoping at some point it will turn into real joy - like how fake laughter can become real if you exaggerate it enough. I'm constantly fighting my own brain, trying to push away the negative thoughts, trying to stop myself from attempting to define or understand progress. Maybe it will be easier to see when I start walking, or maybe that's still just the beginning...