Week 6

It was a strange week with ups and downs, both in life and in my recovery.

Happened

• Monday was a confusing day at work. Let's leave it at that.
• Since I heard about it on Tuesday, I shared the new “NOS Journaal in makkelijke taal” with multiple people who I know are trying to learn Dutch. I have always liked the Japanese NHK News Easy and I am so glad we now also have this resource.
• On Wednesday I took an afternoon off to visit my dad. He’s doing fine again for now, but I want to prioritize seeing him while he is still with us.
• I’ve been slowly trying to mobilize my left foot again. I am already walking on it, but so far that has been a bit of limping. My goal for this week is to actually put some minor load on it, for example by doing some calf raises while I am sitting. It’s crazy how little power there is, but it’s also nice to see that by Wednesday, the situation had already improved so much. I even once managed to stand single legged on the left side for about 20 seconds.
• My enthusiasm on Wednesday also made me discover some exercises by following pain and discomfort, moving my feet in ways that was uncomfortable but not too painful. The videos I found online afterwards confirmed my findings: they recommended most of those movements. All the discomfort and immobility was back on Thursday, and for the sake of not rushing things I did not repeat them too much, but it feels good to be in control of the progress.
• By Friday I felt like there was no progress at all in my walking. It's a bit demoralizing, having pain and knowing that it's probably something I should "go through", but also not being completely certain if this is the correct kind of pain to be seeking out. Am I reducing the soreness, or am I actually hurting my bone?
• Saturday I went to the Boardgayming XL event, where I played Delta Green again with Y. as DM. We played from 14:00 to 21:00, so practically the whole event. Afterwards, I found A. who did not survive in his game of Nemesis (which was still going on with the other players), so we played a few times with my new game Sky Team, which is a two-player cooperative game in which you are trying to land a plane silently assigning dice rolls to all kinds of buttons and levers you need to balance. It's a really fun game, would recommend.
• On Sunday, my dad was home again, as usual I went to Leiden to visit him. My stepmom said she saw real progress in the way I walked, compared to last week and compared to Wednesday. I was glad to hear this, did some more balancing on one leg and felt indeed that it improved. I even dared to walk a bit on forefoot, and it went really well and painless. Being my own physiotherapist, looking for natural motions, guided by pain and soreness seems to pay off after all.

  Read

• The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin, introduction and chapter 1

  Played

• Sky Team, successfully landed on Montréal-Trudeau (green), Haneda (green) and Kuala Lumpur (yellow).

  Listened

• En niemand bleef onaangeraakt (podcast about the HIV pandemic), episode 1

  Watched

• Fight Club (1999)
• The Boyfriend (the Japanese gay dating show on Netflix), episode 1-4