Peace Past Understanding

I was a bit nervous this morning, worrying about the doctor's visit: what if the X-ray shows that the fractures in the pelvis are not healing? Would I still be able to go back to work as planned? What if I will suffer long term arthritis from the injuries?

In the past 3 days, as if they talked to each other (they don't even know each other), my friends Joseph, Ping and Jessie reminded me, in different occassions, to pray more, so I did. I asked God to use me to glorify His own name (Phillipians 1:20) and to re-affirm my commitment to believing in Him.

I was close tears when, at around 4pm, Dr. Tonks examed my X-ray, asked me a few questions, then announced that I should be ready to go back work if I want to. I am free of the complications that I feared. How grateful I was!

At the end of the day, those prayes during the day helped greatly for me to experience "peace past all understanding" as in Phillipians 4:6-7:

• Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Road to Recovery: Hightlights During Week 8, Walking in the Pool

1. Today is the first day of Week 8. We went to see Dr. Tonks for 2nd followup. Just before that, a new pelvis X-ray was taken. It showed that everything is fine, although Dr. Tonks could not tell every status of the cracks in the bone, since the plates blocked his view. He said that during the surgery he fixed the cracks 100%, such that I just have to give it enough time, i.e. until end of Nov, before walking again.

Our annual Disney membership expires Oct 25, so we visited Disneyland and stayed at Grand California Disney hotel. We took advantage of handicap lines (really fast) at one of the rides, then the kids went on the rest of the rides with mom, and I spent most of the two days in Disney swimming pools.

1. 
   
2. Dr. Tonks said OK about walking in the pool, so I did just that tonight at LA Fitness. It was very awkward to walk. My left leg and left foot felt a bit painful. Nonetheless, I walked for about 10 minutes in total, and was getting better towards the end.
   
   

He also assured me that I won't have arthritis, because the both-column acetabulum fractures distributed energy of the impact well such that the inside wall was not damaged, and the bone fragments were large.

However, he asked me to stretch the muscles for moving left leg backwards while keeping upper body straight.

For the most part, I stopped using the walker and the wheel chair: I use crutches that Will Shao lent me most of the time, in preparation to going back to work.

Acetabular Joint

The picture here is in Chinese that shows the acetabular bone.

I took a closer look at the report Dr. Tonks wrote about my surgery. One thing struck me was how the human pelvis functions. Acetabular joint looks insignificant on the X-ray, but its sophistication can only be appreciated in a 3-D model like this one. From Dr. Tonks' report, one of the worst part of my injury was the both-column acetabular fracture.

see this link for more background in Chinese:

http://waike.hxkang.com/diedasunshang/yyzl/46594.html

see this link for more background in English:

http://www.hss.edu/conditions_14420.asp

Road To Recovery: Highlight During Week 7

During week 7, foot-massage has been added to PO (Physiotherapy), besides swimming:

1. Around Oct 7, we bought a Shiatsu Foot Massager with heat. It helped to relieve pain of my foot on the injured side.
2. Oct 11, Ms. Zhang gave me one massage session. The outcome was mixed. While I felt relief immediately afterwards, my upper left leg turned at night to be more painful. Waken up by pain in the middle of the last night, I switched to differ postures, even thought about taking one NORCO (pain killer). After about 20 minutes, I fell asleep again.

The other highlight of Week 7 is that I spent more than 15 hours working on Taylor's go-cart. I learnt how to use spade bits to drill holes for galvanized flanges, half-inch in diameter. We also used 6.5amp drywall screwdriver to finish the front and back axles of the go-cart. The go-cart manual is at:



Today for the first time since A-Day (Accident Day), I drove a car.

Road to Recovery: Week #6

This is week 6 since the accident. I have started exercising in the swimming pool since Sept 27, 2008 (a week ago).

At first, I did some mild stretching in the hot tub at LA Fitness. Slowly I have added some breat-stroke, although I feel a little bit painful at the left pelvis.

Yesterday I swam 600 meters, mostly breast stroke. Afterwards I felt mussle-aches at both left and right pelvis. Why right pelvis? I don't know.

Physiotherapist, Katie Mason, came today because Barbara is sick. Barbara is my normal PO. We figured that it is OK for me to start bench press and other work-outs as long as there is a trainer with me.