Week 4

At the beginning of this week, all hope for a speedy recovery seemed far away, but a week worth of healing is still a lot.

Happened

• As I wrote previously, Tuesday and Wednesday I started and finished composing a shared document about Hadini's Hotel, the imaginary infinite hotel that we use within the Boardgayming community to hold our Dungeons and Dragons sessions together.
• On Wednesday, I was in a lot of pain again. I always imagined having a broken bone as a piercing pain, but so far it has been more of a bludgeoned pain. (Using D&D terms here, in Dutch I would express this as "stekende pijn" vs "beurse pijn".) On Wednesday there was piercing pain all of the sudden. I think it's because – even though I have been very religious about wearing the weird shoe while walking – I've been taking it off while sitting down. And sometimes I like to sit down in weird poses, pushing my foot against the chair. From then on, I always wore the weird shoe even more.
• On Thursday, I saw a man who clearly recently lost his left foot. I am very grateful I have mine still, and that it heals so well so far, even though it seems to go slow at times.
• My seemingly weekly D&D session was on Friday this week, and it was the second part of A.'s first try at DM'ing. The first part was in week 2 and I used the wheelchair a lot back then, but now I actually cycled to J.'s house and walked the short distances to the elevator and such without crutches. It seemed like I was the least tired person at the table, so many people having been on holidays and festivals, but it was still nice to finish the session.
• I've been wanting to go to Subcultures again for weeks and Saturday I finally thought it wouldn't be too unreasonable to take the train to Utrecht with my broken foot. I took my Cabin Zero backpack and attached both crutches via the straps on the sides of it. I walked without them to Bijlmer Arena (which is 400 meters) and then in Utrecht I used them both all the way to Subcultures. I don't know why this boardgame store attracts me so much, but I love being there and browsing their (Indie) RPG section. I bought Kids on Bikes: 2nd edition and also visited some other stores in Utrecht before going back early again.
• Today on Sunday I went to Sassenheim and Leiden again to visit my dad. There are some concerning things, but he seemed doing better today and it was a relaxing afternoon. Today included a combined 3km of walking, and I don't have pain now, so my foot is really healing. I am curious what the doctors will say tomorrow.
• One good thing that came from the broken foot is that my arms are starting to gain muscle, thanks to the crutches. In the first week, I could not support myself with my arms for very long, but walking through Utrecht this week I noticed that has changed. Let's see if I can keep this promise to myself, but I want to keep training my arms. Thanks to running I could easily support my full body weight on one leg, and the goal is to be able to do the same with my combined arms.

  Read

• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (chapters 16-23)