Reflections from an injured athlete

I've got a three-day weekend from school, so it's time to report on my life here in DC. After being massively overwhelmed in my first month, teaching is going smoothly now. My physics class has been taking an enormous amount of time to prepare each week. Doing physics is challenging enough, but helping 24 students through each step is a whole new level of difficulty. Still, I'm really enjoying doing all the problem sets again and appreciating the power of mathematics to understand the universe.

Environmental Science is not as difficult to teach, but we do feel the pressure of covering a lot of material each week. It's basically a college course that requires the students to do a lot of independent study, and my girls are definitely up to the challenge. We've also been reading Daniel Quinn's Ishmael in order to get a sense of the big picture and help us from getting lost in the details of the textbook.

My bike commuting is going surprisingly well, amazingly well, in fact. Cycling home every day from work means that I ride 50 miles per week. My left leg is stronger, my pedaling is smoother, hills are no longer a problem, and my speed is even increasing. My appetite has become voracious again, and any day that I don't ride my bike, I feel that something is missing. I'm definitely an athlete again. I'm not ready to pronounce myself a cyclist yet, but I am definitely a legitimate bike commuter. Now that I've got an awesome new bike light (NiteRider MiNewt x2), it makes no difference how dark it is when I ride home from work. And given my first-year teacher workload, it is usually pitch dark before I leave the office.

Unfortunately, increased cycling prowess has not translated into improved walking. My limp is still significant, and it's been so long since my accident that I don't even remember what it feels like to walk properly. Progress with physical therapy has crawled to a snail's pace, both because most of my time and energy goes into my job, and because there is not a lot more than the therapists can do for me. Basically, from here on out, it's entirely up to me how much better I get. If I go into the gym four times a week and work out at 100% intensity for the next 9 months, I might be in good shape for the next school year. But that is easier said than done, even for someone with my level of determination.

Riding a bike and playing sports is fun, doing physical therapy is not. Doing physical therapy every day, month after month after month, with no end in sight, is absolutely exasperating. So long as I was making good progress, my motivation stayed strong, and I could keep pushing myself. But when there is little noticeable improvement at all, it's really hard to keep going.

I am in an extremely difficult situation. If I don't walk enough, I'll never walk properly again. If I walk too much, I do structural damage to my right knee and hip from limping. The only way to do exactly the right amount of walking is to do it in a treadmill at the gym, where I can push myself until the moment my form begins to break down, and then I stop. I walk on a 15 degree incline forwards, sideways, and backwards. I walk and walk and walk, and when I finish, I'm right where I started.

I'm an athlete that has difficulty putting his pants on in the morning. I'm a mountain climber who struggles to walk up a flight of steps. It's so ironic! Most people hate walking and do anything they can to avoid it. I would happily give up driving for the rest of my life if I could simply walk to the grocery store without struggling.

Well, all of us must carry burdens in life, and mine is uniquely suited to my personality. No one with my kind of injury should ever be able to walk normally again. Yet I am almost there. One more year of fighting, every day, every day, every day.

Now that I've got my teaching fairly under control, I have time turn my attention to other activities I value: volunteering with spinal chord injury patients, and becoming more involved in the Latino church I am attending. Improving my Spanish is actually a lot like physical therapy. I have a long-term goal in mind, and I have to work hard every single week to get there. This weekend, I saw an awesome Spanish-language theater performance on Saturday night. Then on Sunday, I made a new friend at church, Luis, from El Salvador. He moved to DC three years ago in search of work to support his family. His wife arrived here only two months ago, and their children are still back at home with relatives. Now that's a challenging situation! I have tremendous respect for the immigrant community in my neighborhood, and I look forward to learning a lot from them in the next year.