Sjroeplog

As a person and physiotherapist I love people who make something out of their lives. It’s even better when it has to do with movement, like with Angela. I applaud people to make their handicap their strength.

Next Tuesday the 16th of February I’ll have a date with the surgeon.

Let’s see what he says regarding my healing process. In the meantime I’m trying to stay fit as best as possible. I use these weights to stay fit and strong (you’ll never guess where they are from).

Just after the operation I wasn’t able to move my foot at all. Now a week later I find it’s improving drastically.

When you online all day and skype is on people from all over the world are able to reach you. So far I’ve talked to Joanna (AYAD-volunteer when I was in Papua New Guinea and now lives in Melbourne), André (Physiotherapist/IT specialist (there are more physio’s with this combi) who came over to the Netherlands in 2001 on the same exchange programme I used to go to Cape Town with and now lives in Pretoria), Miko (I lived with Miko in the same dormitory from 1997 to 2000 in Nijmegen and he lives in Oxford now) and last but not least

my sister who lives in Christchurch, New Zeeland.

I’ve heard once that buying stuff makes you feel good. My current physical situation allows me to improve my “feel-good-ness”. The mobile phone I have now is two years old, so that entitles me to a new one. At least, this is what my provider tells me. An added reason is that with the exception of my first phone, every other phone I’ve had stopped working after two years. Due to batteries that, just like old men, can’t retain their charge. The first phone had the size of a refrigerator and if you wanted to use it you had to insert a coal.
So how to know which phone to buy? People always seem to know what phone to buy. Well people, I mean some people…well maybe just certain men…ah who am I kidding, I only know one guy who seems to know what you have to buy when you want a new phone.

Since that friend isn’t here to advise me I left the choice to the nice Vodafone person on the other side of the phone. Apparently after stating my wishes, a HTC HD2 was what I needed.

This telephone call took place at 2.37pm. It’s now 3.00pm and I haven’t felt a difference in my mood or my feeling of well-being. When is this supposed to kick in?

The swelling in my foot is going down. What I’m getting back though are wonderful colours.

I spoke to some colleagues at work and they are able to provide me with some work. It will be nice to forget my leg and not just be sitting around all day doing nothing.

I removed the pressure bandage today. The pinkish/purple stuff by the way was the disinfectant.
The inside of my ankle looks terrible.

This is going to take huge amount of time to rehabilitate. So much soft tissue damage makes an ankle very unstable and hard to regenerate.
The other bad thing is the outside of my ankle.

This is no man scar. I want a proper scar to show people afterwards what kind of an ordeal I went through. When the surgeon is going to take out the screws I’m going to ask him to make it bigger.

Friday night 4.00am I step out of a bar with Merijn to go back home. It had been snowing so with the bike in my hand I try to do a slide. Due to the long run, the late hour and a certain amount of alcohol the slide ends on face down on the street. While getting up I immediately felt something was wrong, but against better judgement I cycled back to Merijn’s house. After arriving and having sat down I noticed the swelling was huge and the pain more than an average sprain would cause. A cab took us to the hospital, X-ray’s were taken and soon a diagnosis was made. I had a maison neuve fracture.

In my case the fibula (kuitbeen) was broken (red circle) and the syndemosis had been compromised.

I had to come back next morning to be admitted. The surgeon had to test my ankle after giving me a spinal block. If the ankle was stabile they would give me a cast, if it was unstable two screws would be inserted to stabilise the joint.

The joint was unstable so now I’m walking around with two screws. Unfortunately I can’t weight bear, because the screws will snap if I do so. After approximately 6 weeks the screws will be taken out again and the rehabilitation starts. For now I’ll be at my parent’s place being pampered.

Working and living around people who are very sport minded sort of makes you join in. I decided to take up running again. Since it rather cold I was reluctant to run bare footed. So Merijn took me to run2day. They have a very slick approach. You come in and the sales person guides you to a running lane.

By means of video my gait was assessed. Apparently mine was neutral. Then the shoes come in. You have to feel whether or not a shoe is comfortable. I chose Mizuno’s.

And before you know it you bought the shoes and you’re out on the streets again.

Time for testing, so today I put on my new shoes and had a run. My legs and my lungs liked the shoes so we decided to take them on a longer test run.

Awesome experience. And for you people who think I’m crazy for running bare footed, read this.

When I started working for Physique I was familiar with the history it had regarding the reintegration of people into their professional life. The job started in October 2009 and it has been demanding and fulfilling ever since.

I’ll take you back to why I started at Physique. Back in the days when I was a student I flunked a practical period at the Radboud University Medical Centre just after I came back from a stay in South Africa. This would be in 2001. Somehow I wasn’t able to fulfil my role as a student in that clinical setting. This could have been due to my experiences in Cape town, but probably it had more to do with my character clashing with both my supervisors and the clinical feel to everything done there. Needless to say, it wasn’t my cup of tea.

As luck would have had it I had an opportunity to do my last practical period at Maarten van der Ploeg’s private practice. I was given a second chance and prove myself as a professional physiotherapist. The team, the setting and the experiences made for an excellent opportunity to get back my self esteem.

Now we skip to July 2009 and I’m very certain reintegration therapy is what I want to do. But OCA is not the place I feel happy. There was still this lingering feeling of wanting to have a nice group of colleagues around me. In October 2009 I got the opportunity I wanted. Setting up the reintegration department of Physique again. I can talk a lot about standardising, PR, education, budgets or clients, but ultimately it meant that I had to increase our case load from 3 new clients in October 2009 to 6 new clients a month by March 2010. December 2009 was promising with 5 new clients. January 2010 is not at its end yet and we already have 7 new clients.
And you know what? It wasn’t even difficult come to think about it. It was a team effort.

It’s sort of weird when you come home and you notice the door is locked. And you’re pretty sure the door is never locked. So you walk into the room look around and you see a mouse. Not a regular mouse…

Pffff. ‘][‘ thank you. He came it with my key and just gave me a present. How cool is he?