Thanksgiving

As I approach week …11(?) post surgery, I'm freaking out because I'm not nearly as healed as I thought I would be.  And I'm not nearly as wise as I assumed I would become from all the time spent being injured, cooped up, and miserable.  Every time I open my computer I look at 8a and am so proud of my friends for crushing as hard as they do every day, but sad to not be able to trudge through rhodos carrying a pad full of snacks and yell them up boulders.  I'm getting used to not climbing, but I'm not getting used to how much I miss my Boone family, some of which don't even live in Boone right now.  I love seeing everyone on the weekends I drive up, but it's not enough.  I miss living in the most amazing town over the summer.  Maybe it had something to do with having no job and no school and spending my days training and laughing with everyone about how greazy it was out at Grandmother.  And the surprise visits from Meria and Drexel or Juliet were always so fun!  I can't wait to see everyone in December at Rocktown, where it all began (I <3 Trey Worley).

The physical therapy milestones I'm supposed to have met for week 12 (two weeks from now, aka right after the end of final exams):
~full active range of motion
~full rotator cuff strength

What I have accomplished:
~nothing.

I had planned to do so well that I'd beat all the milestones and miraculously heal in time to train and climb v10 over Christmas (lolz).  How time gets away from you when you keep telling yourself that you'll start tomorrow…

On the bright side, I got to visit my Cecil family over thanksgiving!  I'm so thankful for my wonderful family, everyone cares so much about each other and it's just so great to be around them, even for a short time.  I love them all so much, family family and friend family.

What I would be doing

This post was just a title until right this second.  I made this title when I was super bitter about not being able to climb, and I was going to write a tirade about the boulders I would be falling off of, the routes I would be looking at but probably still not climbing, and all the campus rungs I would be pulling through on.  But that would be miserable to read/write/think about.  (I do think about it allllllllll the time.  I look at the ticklist and training plan I had planned for this season multiple times a day and it's a moment of sadness before I move on because you can't change things by being sad about it.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Right now I'm sitting in Espresso News, starting hour five of being in the same chair, and I'm thinking of all the things I could be doing.  I could be across the street, training at the src.  Or I could be at Horse Pens, $50 poorer, but happily exhausted after a long day of climbing on new rock with great friends.  Or I could just be home.  Or I could be at the zoo, petting camels.  Maybe I'd be in Italy drinking wine and eating bread with olive oil.  (That was a stretch)

But the point is, I could always be doing something else; we could all always be doing something else.  But we're doing what we're doing, so let's enjoy it.  I'm listening to these two older men have a really interesting, but mostly nonsensical, intelligent sounding argument, and it's pretty cool.  Sure, I'd way rather be training or hanging around a campground with my friends, but I'm not.  And I'm okay with that.

He's okay with it too

What's that cliché saying?  Be where you are?  I don't know, you get what I'm saying.

Controlling my psyche when it happens at the wrong time

Sometimes psyche happens at the wrong time, like right now as I sit in the quiet study floor of the library "studying" for my Matlab test in a few hours.  It feels like a beautiful mountain stream is rushing around my entire body, threatening to bubble out like a spring.  I start breathing too loudly and rhythmically, like preparing to start a hard boulder, but actually I'm just disrupting the people around me who think I'm having a panic attack because that's the most exciting thing that happens on the quiet study floors.  Calm down.

Here's a short poem about how I feel:

"Too psyched.  Cannot do pushups.  Breathe quieter."

That's how I feel right now.  In the past when I get too psyched and am not around boulders or in any position to drop everything and go on a run, I drop and do pushups - really fast pushups.  And sometimes jump and yell and wave my arms around.

Little Olivia writhing on the floor because psyched

This has happened my entire life, even before climbing.  Now, I just have something to direct this giant explosion of happy energy towards.  As a child I would randomly scream and jump in the air and sprint to wherever I was headed, like the bathroom or the refrigerator, or the pencil sharpener in my elementary school classroom.  I could never explain to my teachers why I had to run outside real fast and pump my arms and scream at the sky, it just absolutely needed to happen now or I would die because aimless energy is exploding out of me and it won't stop.

Now it's called psyche, but it's still just as bad.  Luckily I have friends who understand and something to direct it into (and I no longer have to sit in a classroom for seven hours a day).  One perfect example occurred last december in a Hardee's in LaFayette, GA: it was freezing at Rocktown that morning, below freezing and windy plus everything was frozen, so I decided to go along with Trey and a few other friends to Hardee's to get warm before heading out to the boulders.  It was about to be a really boring morning, but Carson had his laptop with a bunch of climbing movies on it and we were all huddled around him watching Dave Graham bouldering in RMNP when it happened to all of us.  We all got so psyched and decided that cold weather couldn't stop us from touching boulders.  But I was uncontrollably psyched, as opposed to everyone else who had a handle on themselves.  I was running in circles around Trey's car in the parking lot while we waited for everyone to brush their teeth, and when Trey finally unlocked his car I jumped in the backseat and freaked out because we were all in the car and we have to leave right now!!!!!  But, as Kyle pointed out, I was the only one in the car, so more waiting and panting and shaking.  Then the whole way to Rocky Lane and up the mountain I laughed and rocked back and forth, it was ridiculous.  I don't even remember getting the the trailhead, I just remember everyone telling me to calm down.  But they were all psyched too!

I'm not too psyched anymore, this helped me calm down and I'm going to study now.

This is so much more important than my injury complaints

The funnest waterfall slide in Boone

One reason of the reasons I love climbing, like everyone else, is because nature. 

Cute salamander under the Long Wall at Gma

Sunset off the parkway

I love spending time in the woods, on real rock.  It's beautiful, peaceful, and what climbing is all about.  Un/fortunately so many people realize this and want to love and experience nature and climbing that it's hurting the ecosystem and endangering the very things we all love.  The possibility of climbing areas disappearing is horrifying and awful and scary to think about, but if we don't all work to protect them that's exactly what will happen.  

The least anyone can do is get educated about outdoor ethics and be respectful the next time you're out climbing - or hiking or whatever it is you do out there.  

Check out this Dpm Article, this video from the Access Fund, and commit to the pact here.

Picture from the Access Fund's website

* On a side note that relates: Andrew and I went to Rocktown last weekend and were blasted with music from one direction and loud didgeridoo from another, and it was sad.  Please, please: don't play loud music at the crag/ boulder field.  At the crag it's dangerous, and at the boulder field it's just disrespectful.

Appreciate the beauty and solitude of nature because:

Mountains are beautiful and we get to climb them

Sunsets are beautiful and they happen EVERY NIGHT

Rest days from summer training spent at swimming holes

Back and Forth

Like anyone going through an injury recovery, I've been experiencing ups and downs, emotionally and physically.  Physically, I'm miserable.  Doctor's orders are for me to be a lump.  I'm supposed to sit in bed with my arm propped up watching Netflix all day, do my PT exercises, and ice my shoulder.  I hate doing nothing all the time and I feel like I'm going crazy because I can't run, climb, or even ride a real bike.  I've been riding a stationary bike and doing what I can, but I've never been someone who enjoys being in a gym.  It's fall, it's beautiful, and all I want to do is run at the quarry, bike the greenway, and climb boulders.

Ups and downs all over the place… I wrote that baby paragraph two days ago, and things are already looking up.  Why is everything so much better?  Because I have things to do other than take naps!  Like bake muffins, work on a matlab project, clean my apartment, slowly chop vegetable for fried rice, watch the Portland Boulder Rally Highlights, reread Harry Potter, dig in the rice bucket, make to do lists, make coffee all the time… So many things to do!

And I'm so psyched to get better!  I talked to my physical therapist yesterday and got an outline of my future therapy:

Weeks 2-5 ~ stretching to the point of pain, trying to fix the numbness in my fingertips
Week 6-12 ~ stretching past the point of pain, trying to achieve full range of motion

She told me more, like I knew the outline of the entire rest of my recovery, but I already forgot.  I just know that I might be able to run at 10 weeks, instead of 12, which is a HUGE difference to me right now.  And 10 weeks is really six weeks, which will soon be five, four, three…  Perspective is everything.  I'm also weirdly psyched about my shoulder being forced into full range of motion in two weeks.  Physical therapy already hurts, which is so weird.  I feel like it shouldn't be hurting, my shoulder was fine one day and then the next it's stuck and needs to be forced into normal positions.  It blows my mind that my good shoulder just externally rotates on it's own, and I have to push and force my bad shoulder to rotate less than 90 degrees.  And it hurts.  So weird.

My sling comes off at six weeks (I just celebrated four weeks post-surgery), and yesterday I got to actually use my arm!!  Until yesterday I've been stretching it and moving it around with my other arm, what my therapist calls "passive motion".  I can't just use my arm like normal yet, but little things every day bring a smile to my face.  I'm getting more and more comfortable with being out of my sling for small tasks like typing.  (There's been a lack of blog posts because nothing exciting was happening anyways and I've been typing one-handed).

Other things:
~ One of my roommates just turned 21, I'm so very happy for her and can't wait until I can hang out at wine night with her
~ Andrew is 23, not 24
~ I can't stop listening to Chance the Rapper
~ Go vote!  Early voting goes through next Friday, get informed because we all matter
~ It's trendy soup time
~ Pumpkin Chocolate Espresso Muffins

Hound Ears Triple Crown 2014 and Checkup

I didn't go to the actual climbing part of the Hound Ears Triple Crown, but I went to the part that matters - the post climbing party where they give away free stuff.  And they gave away so much free stuff.  People were winning raffles all over the place, they were throwing free stuff at us from the stage, a guy won something because he ran up and begged, then a guy won a crash pad because he did a backflip off stage without warning; it was madness.

total madness

In the midst of all this, winners were being announced.  It was freezing but so worth it to wait and watch the awards be given out and to see my friends presented with awesome prizes that they worked so hard for!  By the way, it was freezing.  The high in Boone was 45 degrees, and it hit 45 at 6:30am when everyone was making coffee then dropped steadily all day.

Meira kept Rumi warm in her jacket

It was an amazing weekend in Boone with awesome friends and awesome weather.  Sunday at Blowing Rock was exactly what I missed so much about bouldering season (other than climbing).  I got to drink coffee all bundled up in my puffy and watch my friends crush, and I was so happy to just be there with the people I miss so much in a place I still love, plus eat apples with peanut butter.

Oh right: torn labrum, awkward sling, lack of showers

Back to my other life, I saw my Doctor yesterday and he gave me a really good checkup.  My shoulder is exactly where it's supposed to be, and I only have five more weeks in the sling.  Except that my fingers have been numb and tingly, which is not normal, I learned.  Since my fingers are being weird I get to start physical therapy a week early!  I'm so excited to be actively getting better, even if I'm not really supposed to be yet…  And I might be able to get my sling off early, which means I could drive again!  Not being able to drive is terrible, especially since I always want go to two different grocery stores in Knoxville because no store is as good as the Harris Teeter in Boone I lived by this summer.  My roommates are so patient and nice to me about needing to tag along to the store, and what an awful job I do washing dishes with one hand.  This surgery has shown me what amazing friends I have.  Everyone around me has been so good to me, from my Mom standing outside the shower handing me everything to Ryan driving to Boone and sharing his pancakes, and all the little things people have done like helping me put on a jacket or not being annoyed when I move around all the time in the library because nowhere is comfortable in this sling.

Surgery

I suppose I should get around to writing about my surgery, the reason for six months off.

I went to bed at 1 am last wednesday night, after taking two midterms, working 3-10, and then rushing to turn in a matlab project before midnight.  At 6:30am Thursday I woke up and got ready to go.  By 10 I had an IV and was complementing all the nurses on their different hats and asking if I could wear one, then I woke up in recovery.  I was told that over the hour I was in surgery my doctor found a second, larger tear in my labrum that hadn't shown up on the MRI, along with a little flap of my labrum that was dangling around in my joint where it didn't belong.  He cut out the damaged part between the two tears, and the grody little flap, then sewed my labrum back to the bone.  All better!  Luckily I had a "robust" labrum, so now I have a regular sized labrum that's totally fixed.

I'm glad that I made the decision to undergo surgery, especially finding out that I had two tears.  The smaller tear that I knew about was one tearing the labrum from the bone, and the second tear was one ripping the labrum almost in half a little away from where it meets the bone.  I'm not sure yet what, if any, impact having two separate tears will make on my recovery.

Now recovery!

I'm six days out of surgery and it's hard.  I was supposed to take my sling off and shower Sunday (three days post-op) and it was a miserable and humbling experience.  Having my sling off for the first time gave me a glimpse of how hard this is actually going to be.  My arm dangled uselessly by my side.  It felt like my arm weighed a million pounds and I couldn't do anything to move it, and it hurt so so bad.  I didn't think my surgery was or really would be painful until I took my sling off that first time.  I was so demoralized and upset.  I'd been feeling so good!  I felt like this was easy and I was going to magically be all better as soon as I got my sling off.  The reality of how hard I'm going to have to work after being out of the sling is finally setting in.

I think that last night I hit rock bottom of this recovery stage.  I had taken tylenol instead of my prescribed pain medication and everything hurt while I was trying to fall asleep.  My back hurts most of all, but whatever I did and wherever I moved, something hurt.  It was freaking me out and I was getting so frustrated.  I couldn't get myself to relax and it was getting worse and worse because I was letting my worries and fears overpower me.  I had to let go of my stress and convince myself to relax and breathe, that it would be okay.

I will get through this, one small victory at a time.

My most recent victories: getting to sleep lying flat on my back last night instead of sitting up on the couch, and being able to take my sling off without breaking down into tears and wanting to puke.

In her most recent blog post Shauna Coxsey said it perfectly, "All I want to do right now is go climbing. All I ever want to do is go climbing. There is no magic to dealing with injury. We all know exactly what we are supposed to do with regards to rehab and staying positive but sometimes that is just hard."

NRG Craggin Classic 2014

I took this picture of the longest single arch bridge in the western hemisphere in like …2008.  When I went to the New River Gorge with my Mom and took way better pictures with my super cool red digital camera than I did this time with my expensive grown up camera.

I took exactly no good pictures of the bridge or the mountains this weekend.  Here are two with unfortunate lighting that are the best I could do.

The path home from Fayetteville Station.  We squished a penny on the tracks!

But I took some better climbing pictures

Andrew looking zen before the One, Two Punch! (aka One, Two, Double Dyno in Andrew speak)

Melise figuring out beta on Black

Andrew off the deck on Sunshine Arete, starting the send train in some cray Tenaya demo shoes

Juliet finishing strong on Way of the Gun

A lot of the boulders at the New were really big and had low angle slabs up top, which seemed scary and cool.

I wrote the beginning of this post right after coming home from West Virginia, but unfortunately didn't finish it until now, after my surgery.  So real quick: The Craggin Classic was  awesome.  I would love to go again; it was full of good friends and nice people.  Matt Wilder gave a really interesting slideshow that was really inspiring.  I never knew how crazy strong he is and how much he likes to dress up.  A bunch of companies were there to demo gear and put things in the silent auction (I won some stuff!!  For $41 and some begging I left the silent auction with a Misty Mountain "mini fashion chalk bag", Misty shirt, a gear loop from Neon Climbing, a Petzl climbing dvd, and so much J-tree that my lips will never be chapped again and I have no excuse for rough hands ever.)  I was super psyched to demo approach shoes since I couldn't climb, but no companies had approach demo shoes small enough for me :(  But no worries!  Because Andrew demoed so many climbing shoes and I tried a bunch on before we left for the day.

Overall: fun times, gear, lovely people, awesome place, you should go!

Step Two

Find a new hobby that connects to climbing:

I've accepted that I can't climb or train, but that doesn't mean that I can't still love it and be involved.  I'm over getting teary-eyed when my roommates share funny stories from the university gym, or not being able to even open my journal to my Bouldering Season To Do list.  I'm on to loving that all of my roommates enjoy climbing, and that my friends in Boone still like to hang out with me without climbing.  I'm back to watching climbing videos during lecture and reading climbing blogs under the counter at work.  And, there are so many things to do that still involve climbing!  Like take pictures that are borderline adequate with Andrew's camera that he traded me for my beastmaker this season!


Here's some of the better pictures I took today, with some basic photography lessons that might be wrong...

With some help, I learned how to work the manual focus with all the other settings on auto.  Scout modeled so patiently for me this morning:

I found out that a high F-stop (synonymous for aperture?) means less light into the picture, making Scout seem dark and mysterious.  (All she wants is to go lick some plastic bags)

Andrew looks so fall with a …regular? shutter speed and low aperture- which means a big hole to let in light, since the woody room is dark with the doors closed.

I got artsy with the manual focus out at lost cove.  Andrew sussing out beta for Black 45.  And then sum bad lighting decisions, but the boulder is gorgeous enough that I thought maybe it was okay.

I kinda figured out settings for a foggy day by the time Andrew was ready to leave.

There are no pictures of actual climbing because I had no clue how to take unblurry pictures of movement until later that afternoon when Jacob explained that a really low aperture- to let in as much light as possible, and a fast shutter speed is the place to start, and something else about ISO that I didn't understand.

Step One

Ever since I got too psyched and tried again and again and again to do Love Rocket with the boys I’ve been having some weird shoulder pains.  I couldn’t do anything harder than warming up on flat walls, and I couldn’t dead hang without pain.  I also couldn’t do things that required me to put my hands behind my back or in the air, like put on a shirt.  After a month of lying to myself and everyone around me, I admitted that I was injured and went to the doctor to get an MRI.  I was sure that I was going to have to go through physical therapy and be fine in two months max. 

Today, I got the results back: extensive superior labrum tear, which the doctor explained was no big deal if I was fine with never climbing again.  I am far from okay with even thinking of that, so he suggested surgery.  The doctor explained that surgery will completely fix my problem, and I’ll be able to continue my climbing like the injury had never happened in about six months.   The next six months, aka, Bouldering Season in the Southeast, aka, the most important thing to ever occur.  My injury ruins everything Andrew and I have planned for the next six months!  We were supposed to get strong and healthy, climb in Boone in the fall, split December between Arkansas and Rocktown, then Chattanooga in the spring.  Triple Crown.  CCS.  My entire life is climbing.  And the other entire part of my life that I don’t like nearly as much is running, which I won’t be able to do for three months post-surgery.  All I have left is my job at Starbucks and going to my four classes at UT.  What a horrible, miserable existence.  No training, no climbing, no running.  I haven’t even gotten to use my new beastmaker that I drooled over until I could afford to buy it.  I’m still staring at it dreaming of tackling the 45-degree slopers and getting super strong on pockets.  All the things I dreamed of doing this season, which I’m totally fine with sharing now that they’ll never happen.  I was most psyched on Residential Streetmap, a burly compression problem at Blowing Rock.  Bitch, also at Blowing Rock, which is a super fun balance-y throw move to latch a crimp(jug) followed by a mantle that's hard for me.  Left Out at Grandmother, which is a beautiful, usually wet, crimp line that nobody really likes as much as I do.

And I had a secret desire to project Portobello and Riverdance.  All dreams that won’t come true.

And then I realized that I was looking at this all wrong.

I was just thinking of all the things I’ll be missing out on, all of which had to do with bouldering itself.  I have amazing friends, and family, and climbing isn’t the only thing that happens outside.  I can still be with my friends and stare lovingly at boulders without climbing them.  I can focus on other things that will affect my climbing when I finally get to touch rock again.  I can put my energy into teaching myself how to eat healthfully for my body.  There are so many different ways people eat; I want to find the one that fits me, and what’s a more perfect time to do that than when I have nothing else to do for six months?  I was also thinking of picking up some kind of art, like watercolor, to pass the time.  The point is: I’m stuck with this for six months, only six months!  I’m going to be fine, and as much as I feel like it is right now, this is not life altering or Earth-stopping. 

I’m going to be fine.  And deciding to be fine is the first step to really being alright.  Everything else will come with time, and I’ll figure it out along the way.  As Melise said in a recent(ish) post on her blog, “The climb will always be there. I will not. With my fragile, accident prone, chuffer body I need to remember to take care of myself and that nothing, not even *climbing*, is worth being stripped of physical capabilities. I will rest, and in good health I'll take it down. Until then, one XL serving of nutella plz…”