Balance

Everything is about balance nowadays, a lot of balance exercisies with my right leg, but with other stuff you have to find balance as well.

Christmas for instance, my parents got a divorce over the summer and now we (the kids) have to make sure they both get to see us for Christmas, luckily we have two days in the Netherlands. And it turned out good, I had a great Christmas.

Christmas eve I spend at ‘home’ (the house I grew up in), with my mom and brother Reinout we had a very nice dinner an played games. My sister Barbara was spending Christmas in Switzerland with her boyfriend visiting his parents.

Christmas day I went for a walk in the park with my mom and dog, Bounty, my first walk in the park since I broke my ankle. I was so happy my walking is good enough again!

 That night we went to my uncle in Belgium for dinner, he is such a great cook! And I had a very good time. On our way home it started snowing, it was hard to see the road. It took a bit longer but we got home safe, my brother did a good job driving.

The second day of Christmas Reinout, Bounty and I went to our dad. We went sledding and had a lot of fun.

kids with their sleds behind a car

The up side of a recently broken leg, don't have to walk home ;-)

After that we went to my dad’s place and played some games. We played with the Nintendo wii a ski game with the balance board, for the ‘real’ feeling, yeah right… Reinout thought the whole balance board thing made the game to hard for him, he lost from the computer and I won from it. So he ended up playing the game without the balance board, sitting on the couch like it’s supposed to he said.

Monday it was time to go to the physio again. It was a good session and I worked hard, still a lot to do though. When I was in rehab for my leg, it was pretty much a wheelchair rehab. Most of the work for learning how to walk again I did myself and all though it’s functional, there is a total lack of technique. So I’m learning that as well now, I need to do it because otherwise I will get problems with my back and hip. And it’s good for my skiing as well, I need to do a lot of balancing on one leg, the weak one, I’m really unstable now but I’m getting better. And I’m training hard on the hip function I have left. By the end of the balance training I need to be able to jump in a trampoline with my weak leg and keep standing, by that point I get cleared for skiing, long way to go. But this means I will come back a lot stronger. The last time I started skiing again I just did it, on the way I got stronger and better. So my training schedule is getting bigger, I trained in the gym yesterday and I was pretty tired, finally back to serious business.

I had another physio session today, my physio was again happy with my progress, she could see I had trained hard on the exercises. Today I made my first small (very small) jump on my right leg. I was stepping on and off a Step sideways and catching a ball the same time, so I made a small jump, my ankle didn’t hurt and I didn’t fell!

After physio I went to the orthopedic technician that made my new orthosis. My leg still was pretty swollen so at first the orthosis didn’t fit but he took some of the padding out and he will put it back when my leg is back to normal. With these things there will always be things you want to change before it’s perfect. My ski orthosis is making some progress as well, I left my ski-boot because the orthosis will be integrated with the boot. The new orthosis is pretty good, I still have to get used to it but I feel more stable while walking and standing.