Did it! (Possibly over-did it)
Jul. 12th, 2012 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janewilliams20The standard blog userpic is more than usually appropriate this time (and I've changed my FB profile pic to match).
I did it. I'd been aiming my recovery all the way through hospital and the weeks at home on sticks at walking down Snowdon yesterday (taking the train up), and I made it - just.
Four weeks back, we'd been wondering if we could get a wheelchair on the train. Two weeks back, we'd been wondering if I could cope with sitting on a train for an hour with no way to keep the bad leg elevated. Last Thursday, I walked a riverside path for two miles. Since we've been in Snowdonia, I've had access to hills in towns, and walked up and down them. Progress so far - good.
So, we did some shopping for bits of walking equipment - better socks, a rucksack that fitted me (with integral water supply), and a pair of poles each - recommended by a shop in Betws when he heard what I was trying to do. Tuesday morning, we drove through the cloud over Llanberis Pass, parked up, headed through the rain to the train station, redeemed our pre-booked tickets and went round the shop. Gloves - waterproof, and with grip on the finger and palms. Sounds like a good idea, given the non-ideal weather conditions.
Train trip up was uneventful, with much laughter at the recorded guide telling us where to look for interesting things to see - what we could see was the inside of a cloud. Through the cafe, and headed for the summit - and hit Problem 1. Rain, but bright light, meant the Reactolite glasses turned dark, and got covered in rain. We could see better without them, and given how bad my eyesight is, this isn't good. Wind, rain, and steep steps. It's the equivalent of about four flights of stairs to the summit. Not much at all - until you remember that a couple of weeks ago, one flight was something to plan round, the use of a hand-rail was taken for granted, and four flights with a hand-rail was something I used as exercise on a good day at the IET, before I was ill. No hand-rail here - out with the sticks. That was harder work than I'd hoped.
We didn't do the final bit to the cairn and signpost, that was too exposed in the wind conditions, but we'd got to the "natural" summit, so good enough. Back to the cafe for hot drinks, a Welsh Oggie (like a Cornish pasty but with added leeks), and a replan of equipment. Binoculars went away, the pouch on the belt got used for glasses, and the Bear who'd hoped to ride in a side-pocket of a rucksack, with a view, got firmly put inside the main compartment where it was dry.
And off we went - back up half those steps, and round to the main path. The steps had left my left (bad leg) thigh muscles feeling a little wobbly, but that would wear off soon enough, right? I'd forgotten just how steep that path is, near the top. Big "steps" of natural rock going down. I'd also forgotten that the last time I walked anything like this was before I had lymphodaema, meaning that I used to have shock absorbers in the lower legs, and no longer did. So, no jumping from step to step - not a good idea on wet rock anyway. Step down, one at a time, using those sticks. I'd been taught in hospital how to do stairs with sticks, though I doubt if they had anything quite like this in mind.
The path is pretty level after the first nasty part, then starts to slope down, and you either run (what I did last time), or walk, bracing yourself against the descent with your thigh muscles. I didn't really have the stability or shock-absorption for running (and there's that wet rock thing again), but the chap who'd sold us the sticks had taught us how to extend them and use them for this sort of thing, so we did that.Thigh muscles. Yes. I used to have some of those... good job my arms are stronger than they used to be, really.
There were steps, and slopes, and slopes, and steps... and the weather cleared up, eventually. Still cloud, but the rain stopped.
Then I discovered the next problem. The "bad" leg was fine. The "good" leg had come up with a repeat of a problem I'd had years ago - stabbing pain in the hip, and the muscle down the side of the thigh. I'd fixed it years ago by taking glucosamine, but I'd come off that in hospital, and never gone back on it again. Ouch... and more to the point, a leg that wouldn't reliably take my weight when bent. When straight, yes, but it meant being very careful which leg went first down any step. Eventually I got the knack of positioning the stick so I could bend over and have all my weight on that, braced against my lower chest as I went down any big steps.
So, progress steady, but not fast. Anything but fast!
The views up there, once the cloud cleared, were, as always, fantastic. Gulls, one speeding past so close and so fast that what we heard was the sound of feathers slicing air. Ravens, with that deep crooonk. Assorted LBJs, some of them skylarks - flying as normal, but we were seeing them from above. Helicopters - looked like a couple of rescue choppers were on exercise.
Meanwhile, back at the legs... not happy legs, but everything went according to plan. OK, so maybe my plan isn't what anyone else would regard as sane, but it worked perfectly - with, that is, some input from Dave and some passing experienced walkers, who took one look at me and handed out Lucozade tablets (rather like the old glucose tablets, but more so). Dave kept feeding me those, and energy bars, and energy drinks from Halfway House, most of the way down. The plan: look back a couple of posts, you'll find me saying "Part of the healing has been that I've been taking note of what I'm doing, and pushing myself as close to my limits as I can get. Those limits keep moving, so this will take more time now, but I should keep it up.". "As close to my limits as I can get". That doesn't mean "a bit tired". It does include being too tired to stand without sticks, with a mile and a half to go - because I had walking poles to get me that mile and a half. "Too tired to stand even with sticks" would have been going too far, and I think I'd have hit that about 400 yards further than the actual end - which was a wonderful little tea room at the foot of the path, with a mile of tarmac still to go to the car park. I stopped there, Dave went and got the car. As it was, I'd been handling the last part in terms of "look, that landmark is only the length of the ward away", because that was the last time I'd been walking while dependent on two sticks to keep me upright.
So the landlord at the Snowdon Inn fussed over me and supplied homemade lemonade, and then we drove down into Llanberis (giving a lift to another couple of walkers who were also drinking there), and we went to Pete's Eats and had a huge mixed grill with the best chips around.
It's now Thursday, and I'm still stiff and sore, despite a mile up and down the promenade at Pwllheli to loosen things up - but I did it!
I did it. I'd been aiming my recovery all the way through hospital and the weeks at home on sticks at walking down Snowdon yesterday (taking the train up), and I made it - just.
Four weeks back, we'd been wondering if we could get a wheelchair on the train. Two weeks back, we'd been wondering if I could cope with sitting on a train for an hour with no way to keep the bad leg elevated. Last Thursday, I walked a riverside path for two miles. Since we've been in Snowdonia, I've had access to hills in towns, and walked up and down them. Progress so far - good.
So, we did some shopping for bits of walking equipment - better socks, a rucksack that fitted me (with integral water supply), and a pair of poles each - recommended by a shop in Betws when he heard what I was trying to do. Tuesday morning, we drove through the cloud over Llanberis Pass, parked up, headed through the rain to the train station, redeemed our pre-booked tickets and went round the shop. Gloves - waterproof, and with grip on the finger and palms. Sounds like a good idea, given the non-ideal weather conditions.
Train trip up was uneventful, with much laughter at the recorded guide telling us where to look for interesting things to see - what we could see was the inside of a cloud. Through the cafe, and headed for the summit - and hit Problem 1. Rain, but bright light, meant the Reactolite glasses turned dark, and got covered in rain. We could see better without them, and given how bad my eyesight is, this isn't good. Wind, rain, and steep steps. It's the equivalent of about four flights of stairs to the summit. Not much at all - until you remember that a couple of weeks ago, one flight was something to plan round, the use of a hand-rail was taken for granted, and four flights with a hand-rail was something I used as exercise on a good day at the IET, before I was ill. No hand-rail here - out with the sticks. That was harder work than I'd hoped.
We didn't do the final bit to the cairn and signpost, that was too exposed in the wind conditions, but we'd got to the "natural" summit, so good enough. Back to the cafe for hot drinks, a Welsh Oggie (like a Cornish pasty but with added leeks), and a replan of equipment. Binoculars went away, the pouch on the belt got used for glasses, and the Bear who'd hoped to ride in a side-pocket of a rucksack, with a view, got firmly put inside the main compartment where it was dry.
And off we went - back up half those steps, and round to the main path. The steps had left my left (bad leg) thigh muscles feeling a little wobbly, but that would wear off soon enough, right? I'd forgotten just how steep that path is, near the top. Big "steps" of natural rock going down. I'd also forgotten that the last time I walked anything like this was before I had lymphodaema, meaning that I used to have shock absorbers in the lower legs, and no longer did. So, no jumping from step to step - not a good idea on wet rock anyway. Step down, one at a time, using those sticks. I'd been taught in hospital how to do stairs with sticks, though I doubt if they had anything quite like this in mind.
The path is pretty level after the first nasty part, then starts to slope down, and you either run (what I did last time), or walk, bracing yourself against the descent with your thigh muscles. I didn't really have the stability or shock-absorption for running (and there's that wet rock thing again), but the chap who'd sold us the sticks had taught us how to extend them and use them for this sort of thing, so we did that.Thigh muscles. Yes. I used to have some of those... good job my arms are stronger than they used to be, really.
There were steps, and slopes, and slopes, and steps... and the weather cleared up, eventually. Still cloud, but the rain stopped.
Then I discovered the next problem. The "bad" leg was fine. The "good" leg had come up with a repeat of a problem I'd had years ago - stabbing pain in the hip, and the muscle down the side of the thigh. I'd fixed it years ago by taking glucosamine, but I'd come off that in hospital, and never gone back on it again. Ouch... and more to the point, a leg that wouldn't reliably take my weight when bent. When straight, yes, but it meant being very careful which leg went first down any step. Eventually I got the knack of positioning the stick so I could bend over and have all my weight on that, braced against my lower chest as I went down any big steps.
So, progress steady, but not fast. Anything but fast!
The views up there, once the cloud cleared, were, as always, fantastic. Gulls, one speeding past so close and so fast that what we heard was the sound of feathers slicing air. Ravens, with that deep crooonk. Assorted LBJs, some of them skylarks - flying as normal, but we were seeing them from above. Helicopters - looked like a couple of rescue choppers were on exercise.
Meanwhile, back at the legs... not happy legs, but everything went according to plan. OK, so maybe my plan isn't what anyone else would regard as sane, but it worked perfectly - with, that is, some input from Dave and some passing experienced walkers, who took one look at me and handed out Lucozade tablets (rather like the old glucose tablets, but more so). Dave kept feeding me those, and energy bars, and energy drinks from Halfway House, most of the way down. The plan: look back a couple of posts, you'll find me saying "Part of the healing has been that I've been taking note of what I'm doing, and pushing myself as close to my limits as I can get. Those limits keep moving, so this will take more time now, but I should keep it up.". "As close to my limits as I can get". That doesn't mean "a bit tired". It does include being too tired to stand without sticks, with a mile and a half to go - because I had walking poles to get me that mile and a half. "Too tired to stand even with sticks" would have been going too far, and I think I'd have hit that about 400 yards further than the actual end - which was a wonderful little tea room at the foot of the path, with a mile of tarmac still to go to the car park. I stopped there, Dave went and got the car. As it was, I'd been handling the last part in terms of "look, that landmark is only the length of the ward away", because that was the last time I'd been walking while dependent on two sticks to keep me upright.
So the landlord at the Snowdon Inn fussed over me and supplied homemade lemonade, and then we drove down into Llanberis (giving a lift to another couple of walkers who were also drinking there), and we went to Pete's Eats and had a huge mixed grill with the best chips around.
It's now Thursday, and I'm still stiff and sore, despite a mile up and down the promenade at Pwllheli to loosen things up - but I did it!