Exercise Boot camp for Joe (And me)

The weather is still crap, snowing again today and ranging between 4 and 5 degrees centigrade, so not at all nice and nowhere near warm enough to go outside and train. Everywhere is wet and saturated with water and with the Easterly wind it's just miserable. With the season looming fast there's a requirement to get out there and shed some pounds and get fit for the first match, especially for Joe what with having been sitting around for the last 12 months. So with 2 weeks off and the weather predicted to be cold and miserable for the full two weeks a contingency plan has been devised...

Exercise Boot Camp.

The plan is everyday we're going to be trying to get out and do something, hopefully for the most part it'll be useful in more than one way to cricket development. The main part of it though is based around a video I've come across on Youtube that I like that has a quick 5-6 minute work-out that'll get both of us fit and ready and maybe we'll lose a little weight. This is the video here or click on the video above. We made a start on it yesterday and it went okay as a first attempt and initially Joe needed a lot of cajolling to get through it and there was a lot of stopping and starting. But today we've done it again and we both did it and there was a very marked improvement - especially for Joe and I think now he's slightly enthused by the idea. *Note, we're not doing the full 30 seconds for each exercise we're only doing 15-20 seconds and we're looking to increase the time as we get fitter.

On day one 29th (Friday) we also went to the 'Muno' (Community Centre) and hired out one of the badminton bays and all played Badminton for an hour Ben, Joe, Michelle and Me and that was good as well as it incorprates eye, ball and bat coordination skills which can only be beneficial. I made sure that when I played Joe I was lobbing the ball up and into the corners alternately, getting him to run around lots. Needless to say he slept well Friday night!

Part of the same plan involves looking to reduce his carb intake, Michelle said at the start of the holiday that she felt we needed to do something (I've been saying this for months now) so, at last she's on board and hopefully he'll get served dinners fit for a boy who is the smallest member of the family as opposed to portions the same size as the rest of us?

There's a second video of the same nature that focuses on upper body strength and I'm hoping that after a week I might be able to incorporate that into my own exercise program, but at the moment I'm a big fan of this idea and I feel really motivated to do it, primarily because it is so fast to get done and out of the way.

Tomorrow we're planning to go swimming.

General update 51 days to go

Just back from another training session at James Hornsby school. Ben did really well batting. They had the Bola machine set at 55mph for most of the time he was there and I think they speeded it up to 60mph for one or two of them and he coped with it for most of the time. He seemed to be following their instructions to step out towards the ball and he was playing the ball with a straight bat in the way that Frank McLeod showed him last summer which was good to see. He needs this if he's going to secure a place in this team (U15's) as there's a lot of competition for the places in the first XI as such, especially with regards to the specialist bowlers, it may turn out that it's simply not good enough just to be able to bowl. Fielding might be taken into consideration and is always something I like to see e.g. full committment to fielding and I'd want to see Ben making 100% effort with regards stopping the ball in the field and chasing the ball down, but the ability to get 10 or more runs on the board on average each week might make a massive difference in the games. So a good start by Ben this early in the year. The main thing is that he came away having enjoyed it. My only worry is that it is a psychological thing and when confronted with a real ball and the additaional human variation factor, he may not do so well?

U13's weren't that well presented with only Harry there in attendance, and Joe watching. No sign of Stevie this year as yet. There was some confirmation that Ryan G-Mans son was playing for another team this season and there was some speculation that Killer Barnes might not be playing this year?

Joe update.

Joe's on 51 days to go now, but I've got a feeling I was being a little pessimistic with that schedule. I seems to recall that if he was on track and if it hadn't been for the slip in the ice he'd only be looking at 3 weeks now before some sense of normality could return. This week coming... Friday he's got another visit to the fracture clinic (4.30) and prior to it 5.15 he's got a physio session. I think the main emphasis of the fracture clinic observations is the wound (Stiches/pin removal wound) rather than the bone, so I don't expect that they'll be taking more Xrays. But it'll be interesting to see what they say with regards what he can and can't do and any update on when he can return to normal activities. But overall things are going well, the treatment clinic change the dressing on a 2-3 times a week basis and check the wound and we re-dress it on a daily basis removing everything except for the Steri-strips.

Limp and movement-wise, Joe's getting on well, today he was running from the car to the hall because it was raining and cold and when you watch him and he's unaware he does tend to walk fairly well and looks 65% okay, with only a bit of a limp. I'm quietly confident that by the end of the season/summer the limp with have gone and if I'm really optimistic I wouldn't be surprised if the limp was gone by the end of April. A lot of this is down to the weather though. If we have an early spring and the weather is conducive with getting out there and doing stuff, I'm sure that the increase in activities and sport will simply mean the muscles will develop quickly and normailty will resume. The bad weather holds everything back - me included.

Dave update.

As yet my training plans and schedule are still behind where I'd like them to be. During the week I'm just exhausted by the time I get in and as a partial sufferer of SAD syndrome, I can't motivate myself to do stuff when it's dark. I'm enthused by seeing the gradual return to summer and every evening getting on the train seeing more light in the sky. A couple of mornings ago the sun was up when I went to work and today I've seen a Black Headed Gull with its spring plummage (Chocolate Brown Head)

Which is a good indicator that summer is on its way.

But when I have been enthused I've been working on my deltoids as they were a problem and core strength and flexibility drills. Stretching and planks mostly with some yoga moves thrown in. I have noticed though in the stretches, my knees creek like hell which doesn't sound good at all, so I've been massaging my knees as well. What I really need to do is get a little sequence of exercises and stretches put together so that I can just do a regular sequences every day, rather than a mixture with something here and something there as I am at the minute. The other thing I need to do having seen on the news that people like Andrew Marr have keeled over with a stroke and he's only the same age as me and you'd imagine he'd be one of those types that would have been down the gym at least once a day? So I should be doing cardio-vascular stuff too. The CV stuff doesn't appeal to me at all, but really it is something I should be doing. What I have done though which I think I am seeing the benefit of is the reduction in meal sizes and the avoidance of fat in my diet. I've reduced the amount of chocolate that I eat and I need to maintain this.

At the training session I had a bit of a bowl, to see if it would affect my foot as I'm suffering from metatarsalgia, and the good news was that I seem to have come through that quick session okay. The work that I've been doing on my deltoids seems to have paid off as I'm not suffering from any pain there, it does feel like they've had a bit of a workout, but not like they've been over-loaded, so that's good news and encouraging from a point of view where I feel more inclined to continue with the exercises. This here is the one that I'm using at the minute as it only requires working with your own body weight. Hopefully if it all goes well, I'll move up to something a bit more demanding and resume doing handstands.

The Paddock

I've yet to mention the paddock as far as I can recall this year as the weather has been so bad, I may have mentioned it a month or so ago as a group of youths all about 17-18 years old went over there a few times all wearing football boots. The paddock is as wide as it is long, it's tiny 80' x 80' maybe and there was about 8-10 of these blokes and they played football in there for about 2-3 hours. I couldn't look after they'd finished, the impact of so many blokes in such a small area would have been devastating, so I've no idea whether it's recovered or not. I know from my own garden, that the weather in the last couple of weeks has been in excess of 4 degrees centrigrade and therefore the grass has been growing. But it has been raining and the drainage is poor in there, the upside of that is, it's so wet you can't play football in there, but at the same time it makes it difficult to maintain the grass. I may have a look at the end of Feb or over half term, I think I usually get in there with a roller during Feb, to give it a flattening. I need to clear some bushes as well as they're shading the grass which is never a good thing, so there is some work to do.




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Joe progress - Physio

So, we're now well into the Physio stage of Joes recovery. In addition he's getting out and about more and getting back to being active, outside loving sporty Joe.

Yesterday we had our 2nd Physio visit with Jill at Basildon & Thurrock hsopital and she was very pleased with the progress that Joe had made in the intervening week. She seemed surprised and pleased that we'd done the exercises that we'd been given three times a day with only 2 of the days only having 2 physio workouts.

The exercises so far have been about mobility improvement of the knee and the ankle and general strengthening of the thigh muscles from what I can make out

Rain stopped play again and general update

 Last weekend all the cricket was called off, as far as I'm aware not a match was played despite the fact that over the weekend the weather was fine, it was the run up to the weekend - rain, rain and more rain and all the venues including our own pitch at Mopsies were water-logged. But the weekend saw a change in the weather. The Azores high pushed north moving all the bad weather up to where it's supposed to be... In the north - Scotland and Northern Ireland and at last for the first in months we had some proper weather. Sunshine 25 degree centigrade and blue skies!

We'd decided to go up the Midlands (Derby) to see the in-laws having had notifications by email and text messages that our matches were off, so this was the perfect opportunity to get up there and see them. But, somehow I'd missed the fact that Ben had a game on Sunday and it wasn't until we'd left and were half way up the M1 that Kieran Barbero's Mum sent a text asking "Is the U13's match off then"? So as soon as we go there I had to text Ben's manager Dave Ayres and explain that we'd cocked up. He then did say that it wasn't 100% that the U13's game was on and that it may yet be called off and sure enough by the end of Saturday we got notification that it had been called off as well because of the state of the pitch, so I felt a lot better about the situation as it felt as though we'd let the team down.

Joe's recovery update

I haven't posted any pic's of late of Joe's leg, so here's the most recent shot this morning. As I've said before the visual aspect of the recovery seems to have slowed down massively and the difference from one clinic visit to another is now very minimal. Overall though, Joe's doing well, since the consultant spoke to him, relating his condition to the astronauts and the way that their bones and muscle deplete because of inactivity, Joe's been ditching the crutches and hobbling around with out them when he's indoors, outside though he's still using the crutches, but he seems to be putting more weigh through the injured leg.

He's got his first physio visit at the hospital this Wednesday and we're all looking forward to seeing what they say, but a few people have said that they reckon by the time he gets back to school in early September he'll be walking around with a limp with no crutches or even a walking stick, which if it happens will be really good news. But for the moment he's still very reliant on his crutches and is missing out on so much, normally he's a very active kid and just today on day one proper of the 6 week holiday he already looks very fed up and is saying that he's bored and that he wishes that he could get into his new school.

A couple of days later... Just been to see the Physio at the hospital (Jill) and that's gone really well. She checked out his posture and the way that he's walking and where Joe's got deficiencies and over-compensating for the injured leg. His mobility in his ankles and knees are good and generally his strength in the bad leg is okay and only slightly behind where she expected it to be at this stage. So Joe's been given a list of bends, stretches and drills to do and we have another visit next week. Overall it went really well and again the message is that he's expected to be walking without any aids by the time he goes to secondary school. When we got home I suggested that Joe have a little go on his bike and he had a little go and said it felt weird - I think he's mostly worried about falling off and having to put the bad leg down quickly.

I've just gone through the physio routines with Joe and there was only one where he reported pain. Sitting on the floor with a green terra band around his foot with me holding the end he has to  push his foot away from me as at 2.56 in this vid. From the physio advice I've had from Liz Ward on www.bigcricket.com in the past I know that if there is pain then this shouldn't be done, so we adjusted the resistance so that it was much lower and then this was fine.

This is Joes wounds as they were on Monday. The top one is the inside of the leg with "The hole" to the left and the "Exit wound" to the right nearer the top of the leg and as you can see they're very slowly getting better. The physio today had a look at the scars and said that the exit wounds can and should be massaged to break down the scar tissue under the surface and showed Joe what he needs to be doing, which was good as this is one of the things I've been a little concerned with. The lower image is the impact wound.

The Paddock.

After months of rain the paddock at last has dried out enough for some work to be done on it. As usual the kids that try and play football in there, they run all over it and ruin it and for some reason dog walkers pretty do the same simply because the grass is short.

With some rolling though and the addition of a few buckets of water it came good and by the next day we were able to get the nets up for the first time and have a bit of a knock about.

Once the work had been done what with the temperature at 30 degree centigrade and 20 at night the moisture soon dried out and left us with a pretty smooth surface for Ben and Kieran to bowl on. The leg -side we leave a little rough so that the wrist spinners have got something to work with.

The nets had to be put up in a different way this year because the fence has been taken down and the council refuses to replace it and this took ages and I had virtually no help at all from the boys as they all mucked about as I put it all up.

Once up though it worked quite well and needless to say if it goes up again it'll be a lot easier 2nd time around.

Ben Transformation

This morning Ben left the house on the verge of being labelled a 'Bleedin Long Haired' and came back with a new hair cut, not only that having had it cut he looked taller than me and when we measured him at the age of 13 he's about 5mm taller than me!

Here's the new look Ben...

What a difference 20 minutes makes to your life, and this wasn't instigated by me, this was his own doing and he loves the new look and the way that it feels.

Fox in the back yard.

This is a bit off-topic, but a fox turned up in our garden in broad daylight and decided he'd have a snooze. He knew we were watching him out through the window, but he wasn't bothered although he kept and eye on us, he ended up being there for about an hour and half.

Stuck a net up outside the house

We stuck a net up outside the house so that Joe could have a bat. We stick a chair behind him in case he over-balances and it works quite well and most of his shots are leg side and it gives him a chance to have a bit of fun and gets him working with both legs and balancing all of which are good news and it's just good that he gets out and about doing stuf rather than being indoors doing nothing much at all.

It's good to see that Joe's now getting up and about doing things, we've been up North recently to see his Grandparents in Derby and his Granddad has set up a table tennis table and for much of the time we were playing table tennis and this again was encouraging Joe to balance and use the bad leg.

 

 

Check out my other blog here - this is all about Leg-spin bowling and nothing else. Double click on the image below.

 

Joe update

Fracture Clinic appointment

Joe leaving the house today. His main question was - when are the pins coming out and how's it going to be done. Previously when he broke and dislocated his arm they were pulled out with a pair of pliers with no aneasthetic, so he's having visions of a similar approach.

Joe in the hospital waiting for the consultant.

 Over-head view looking down on to the shin.

Side view.

Thankfully I went in no real expectation of any major leap forwards and the overall feeling was just that. In the early stages, because of the nature of the wounds, it seems as though each time we went to the clinic there were dramatic changes, but then six weeks ago when we last had an xray we came away gutted. The wounds as you've been seeing have healed well, and we're now at the stage where they are almost all sealed, so the differences between each visit are now minimal. So much so I'm not even going upload any pictures of them. But today the main event was the Xray and again if I'm honest they were a little disappointing and yes this is really going to be a long process - at least a year. As you can see here, both the Tibia and Fibia are not that well alligned and again the consultant was no concerned and he's still 100% sure of a full recovery and the leg being normal once again in the future.

I think it's the fact that if you know about sports injuries, you know that people bounce back from these relatively quickly and it's only if you scroll back through the blog to here that you can refresh your memory of how bad this injury is and you see the situation from a realistic perspective.

So with that in mind think about the positives.

1. The scar tissue is nearly completely sealed and the bloke said not to look at the scar tissue now from an aesthetic point of view and think that this is how it's going to be, he was saying in a year, the difference will be dramatic. I asked about having the scars treated with massage and he seemed to agree that it was a good idea, but also seemed to think that this will be inlcuded in the physio stages of the recovery. Michelle asked about the physio and he said that this could now start and forms were filled in to instigate the physio. I asked about whether the scar tissue and wounds were such that they affected the muscle structure and he said that on the scans this wasn't evident.

2. The bones he was happy with and feels there's no issue. What he did say though was that Joe needs to be progressively looking to load weight onto the foot/leg. He explained to Joe, that in space where the astronauts are subjected to weightless-ness all their muscle tissue wastes away and calcium deficiency in the bones becomes an issue...

From - http://www.livestrong.com/article/362352-the-effects-of-zero-gravity-exercise/

Musculoskeletal Impacts

Even during periods of short duration in space, your muscles and bones begin to deteriorate. This is particularly true in your legs, which rapidly lose calcium in weightless conditions where they don't have much work to do. You'll lose muscle mass, and your bones will become weaker. You might lose up to 10 percent of bone in your lower limbs, according to the Canadian Space Agency. It's been estimated that astronauts risk losing two percent of their total bone mass for every month spent in zero gravity.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/362352-the-effects-of-zero-gravity-exercise/#ixzz20WuRmcTf

He then said that if Joe puts weight onto the leg, the body responds in that it feeds more calcium and hormones to the leg and the recovery process speeds up and becomes more efficient. Michelle asked - in that case could Joe remove the boot and walk around indoors without the boot putting weight through the injury and he said yes. So indoors now the order of the day is boot off and more weight, hopefully Joe will buy into it and do this. I'm trying to get him to have the leg up high as well when he's sitting around.

3. The Pins; The next appointment is at the end of August and the consultant has said that they'll then consider the removal of the pins, if the bones look good enough, it then maybe as little as a month and the pins will be removed. I think the procedure for the removal is general aneasthetic and a over-night stay?

4. Physio; This is to start soon it seems, it's just a case of waiting for the letter to come with the 1st appointment. This will be interesting as the physio's that we saw last time were hard-core, we were joking in the car that they'll have Joe hopping around the ward on his bad leg within minutes. But seriously these Physio's at the hospital don't muck about - they will have him doing stuff straight away miles out of his comfort zone, but I reckon he needs it, especially now that I know about the astronaut analogy.

5.Weight; I'm concerned about his weight, with no exercise and still eating in the way that he normally does, he is definitely putting on weight and this is something that we'll have to address.

In summary, it is a long process and I can see that it is going to take a year and that there's no way that he's going to be taking part actively in sports during the first months he at his new senior school. I was kind of hoping that by mid September he may be walking around without crutches, but increasingly that seems unlikely. But, everything is moving slowly forwards and the thing I'm looking forward to seeing is the physio taking place.

And on and on and on (The rain)

Rain Stops Play. When is it going to stop? It feels like we haven't had a 24 hour period when it hasn't rained for weeks now, maybe a month? Every day it rains at some point, most days, as it is now for hours and hours on end soaking every single cricket pitch in the area. I've got a match on Sunday and so has Ben, but with 48 hours to drain and dry the likelyhood is that all the matches over the whole weekend will be called off again!

Paddock
I had a look at the paddock the other day because the football kids had been on there, they still haven't got it even though we've lost yet another international competition. Lads it's a lost cause, that will never be helped especially by practicing on a pitch that is barley 70' long! Stamina is a part of what you need to be able to demonstrate, go and play on a full size pitch somewhere!!! Inevitably, with it being so wet and combined with the fact that it appeared that they had decided to stand on the wicket at the point where seamers would land the ball, the wicket was ruined, don't what they'd been doing but it was only in this area and they'd turned it to mud almost.

During one of the breaks in the weather, I went over and re-seeded the area and scattered top soil on it at dusk. Over-night it rained and this morning I had another look and the seeds and the top soil because of the rain all seemed to have merged into the surface, possibly setting up a situation for quick establishment of growth assuming the rain and sun carry on in this on off manner. I'll have to wait and see.

Joe's Leg

I've not posted anything on here for a while re Joe's progress with his leg. We've got an appointment tomorrow at the fracture clinic so we're hoping for some good news going forwards with the bone healing situation. The big open wounds are all now almost sealed and the only one that is still 'Wet' is the impact wound. We're not getting our hopes up too much as this has been called as a year long healing process, so there may be very little difference tomorrow, but some good news would be good. We'll have to wait and see...

Joe update

No pictures as the last set that were done last Friday didn't come out too well as my camera is on its last legs and the screen didn't work so I was unable to see if the images were in focus and they weren't. Michelle took Joe to the clinic this afternoon and another little milestone was reached. The "Exit wound" no longer has any plasters or covering on it and the other two the "hole" and the "Impact wound" only have water-proof plasters and there's no bandage at all. The two remaining wounds only have small areas of open tissue left that need to seal, so hopefully by the time we visit the fracture clinic all of the wounds will sealed up, that's not this Friday but the one following.

With no bandage on the wounds this has meant that the skin surrounding the scar tissue is itchy and this evening Joe was scratching it and was able to feel his leg and its physical shape and he got a little upset. At the moment where he should be feeling smooth continuous bone along the length of the leading edge of his shin, it feels as though under the skin - remembering that the tissue surrounding the bone would have come away from the bone in this instance, this is now fresh scar tissue and feels lumpy and irregular. He didn't like this and obviously wasn't expecting it to feel like that and he got a bit teary. I asked him if he was okay and he said that he was fed up with not being able to do anything. I suppose the combination of trying to cope with the on-going boredom and lack of options to him and with the realisation that his once perfect leg is now not so perfect found a little chink in his emotional armour and he got a little bit upset. On a more positive front though - on his last day the teachers (Aware of his new lack of bandage status) have said that he can join in with a session at the school pool, so hopefully that'll come to fruition. It should be okay as it'll be after the 13th when the next set of Xrays are done and a new mile post set? I'm not going to speculate what the outcome of the 13th will be, but I do hope it is one that has some obvious visual improvement in Joes situation and one where they set him new personal objectives that indicated a definite move forwards.

On the scar tissue front...

"Debbie," 35, came to me several years ago for help with what she thought was carpal tunnel syndrome. After observing a large scar on Debbie's wrist I inquired as to its origin. When she was nine years old she had put her hand through a window chasing her brother. After working on her hand for two sessions, scars from the glass cuts were reduced visibly by about 80 percent, she obtained range of motion back in her hand/wrist and the numbness was gone".

In addition there's a load of stuff on Youtube on the subject, so overall this sounds interesting for the coming months http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vMvAJYikxo

Joe Update

Crap weather, Joe out of action and not much cricket for any of us (It's raining now) so there's not a lot of stuff to write about, I'm even contemplating a new blog that is less cricket focussed? Anyway - here's the main thing in my life once again - Joe's progress. We've had a development in his treatment today, the wounds as you can see below have now reached a stage where they'll only need to be treated twice a week and I reckon that'll be Tuesday and Friday. Michelle will do the Tuesday stint and I'll do Friday.

Above - The 'Impact' wound

Bone 'Exit' wound and entry scar for the operation

'The hole'

'The hole'

Wide shot to get some sense of perspective.

The next Fracture clinic visit is 21 days away on Friday 13th July not that distant from the start of the school holidays, so we're hoping that the air boot comes off then and that the broken bones look a lot knitted together and that Joe will only have the crutches? I should have kept a very detailed diary of all the things that he's missed out on, but obvious and easily quantified things include every single cricket match and training event at cricket, which in the longer term could potentially lead to him giving the sport up because when he resumes next season he may feel that he's disadvantaged in that he's been left behind ability-wise as all his team mates and progressed well. The same with Karate, he's missing all of his Karate sessions and missing out on gradings, this means he'll probably be 2 or 3 belts behind where he should have been and this might quash his enthusiasm for the sport again. I'm sure it wont, Joe loves sport and if it wasn't for the incident he'd have probably started to play football this year with a local team that many of his mates go to, again this aspiration will have to be put on hold as his bones fix. We're not expecting the consultant to say that he can kick a ball with venom till Feb or March maybe later in 2013.

He's missed out on several school activities and events - the annual 4th year trip away which he was really looking forward to, which was one of those activity events. He's not going to be able to engage fully with the school dance festival which is a leavers event and Joe loves dancing and singing and would have loved to have been an integral if not major part of that. We're not going to be able to have our annual surfing holiday in Cornwall, so that'll thwart Joe's surfing development too. So it's basically a lost summer for Joe where all the normal things that he'd do as part of his growing up process are all being held back a whole year, which isn't a good thing at his age and especially when he's a July born child meaning that he's potentially disadvantaged academically and developmentally simple because of the time of the year he was born and this incident may well impact on the potential for Joe to cope with that?

Joe's progress

Another good visit to the clinic to get Joe's wounds dressed and assessed.This visit was timed better and as a result we were in and out like a flash. The trick seems to be that you get in there a bit later to miss all the old people who don't have anything better to do than get up at the crack of dawn and form a queue outside the clinic from first light. This is a phenomenon I first noted in Plymouth when I was at Art College. Our house when we was at Art College was almost five miles away from the City centre, so in order to get there for nine we used to have to get on a bus reasonably early with all our gear - bags, cameras, portfolios and all sorts, sometime really weighed down and quite often with a hang over. But the whole process was made ridiculously unbearable by the fact that for some unfathomable reason loads of old people who weren't at college or in employment still seemed to not get the idea of being retired and having a lay-in. So at 07.30 in the morning come rain or shine, sleet or snow, instead of being tucked up snug in bed where we wanted to be, they'd all make their way down the steep cobbled streets of Keyham

Keyham Plymouth.

risking life and limb in the ice and frots to clog up the buses to the brim before we had a chance to get on. Being polite we'd give them our seats and stand there on the bus for over an hour as it swayed and swerved its way into the city centre covered in bags and folders like bleeding donkeys. We never ever got a seat, the bus was always full of all these old people, but where the hell were they going at 7.30 in the morning in the freezing cold? Why couldn't they have waited till after the rush hour - we could have sat down then and saved hundreds of pounds on physio later in life caused by twisted spines where we were forced to stand with all that kit over our shoulders!

So, anyway, having remembered those experiences we tried going in a little later today and it worked, there was one last old bloke in front of us and we were in and out in hardly anytime at all.

Prior to going Joe had also been showing off - showing that he was able to make a few steps with no assistance. He made four steps which is a good start. I think it's probably hard physically to do that, but more of an issue is the confidence and the concern that in doing so is he damaging the join in the bone if it is starting to fuse together at this stage?

One outcome that I've been peased to see is that one of Michelle's friends Lynn bought Joe an Airfix kit (Hurricane WWII) and Joe made that with his Grandad and has now gone on build a Junkers Ju88. This is the kind of stuff I used to do when I was a kid - good wholesome Old Skool stuff!

Even Ben's been inspired and has got his Butt off the settee and away from the poxy XBOX and discovered that keeping it real is fun and interesting and offers a challenge!

Joe during his very short wait today in the clinic and yet another pair of tracksuit bottoms bite the dust.

Joe behind the screen not wanting to look at his leg. Again this was a very low level pain event with Joe recording a pain level of less than 1 out of 10. The nurse was talking about the scabs again today saying that it's quite important that the scabbing is best not allowed to form otherwise this would lead to a situation where there would be an indent in the leg. So when the dressings come off, she pulls away as much of the scab that is beginning to form as she can. As you can imagine this is quite a sore sensation for Joe and yet he only gives it 0.5 out of 10, suggesting that the recent pain was quite bad!

Later in the day Michelle took Joe out for a push in the wheelcahir and some fresh air as we had some respite from the rain during the day. In fact it was warm and sunny - very different from the previous 2 days.

Joes Progress #4

Another dressing change for Joe, this time at the local clinic. Again less traumatic because with each change the healing process has advanced and the wounds less painful I guess, having said that he was still screaming in pain and crying at one stage, but far less than last time and the level of pain was less evidently. I got another look at the whole thing and I'm still shocked at the size of the hole that it in his leg where the tear was. If I'd had my camera I reckon I'd have taken a picture of it because it is unbelievable. The nurse asked...

"Is he on pain killers"?
"No, not as a general rule, but prior to coming here we've given him some because we're aware that it hurts". She looked at me kind of in astoundment, I followed.... "Well, I sort of noticed that at the hospital after a few days, they only gave him the medicine when he said he was in pain"...
"Do you reckon looking at that, you'd not be in pain"?
"Yeah - I dunno, again at the hospital they got him to explain the pain on the basis of a 1 to 10 rating and generally he doesn't say that he's in pain". Again she looked at me in disbelief.
"I think there's no way that he's not in pain and that you should continue to give him the maximum dosage that is described on the bottle".
So on that point I agreed and the rest of today we've dosed him up with paracetamol and we're holding back the Ibrofen stuff for the occassions where he asks for pain-killers. These occurances happen usually at night and are 'Cast' related - pressure on his heel rather than wound related. But we'll see how it goes and see if notices any difference being dosed up all the time?

The next visit
This is Friday and will be at the hospital and as far as I'm aware they're going to Xray the leg again to check how it's fixing, they'll also dress the wound as well. Perhaps we'll have some news on whether this cast he's currently got that he can't move himself will come off and be replaced with a lighter resin cast?

Overall he's pretty chipper, singing and being the usual Joe, but stuck inside.

Joes progress # 3

I'm back at work today, leaving Michelle with Joe. Already I've had a text from Michelle saying that this morning on his first venture out of bed at 09.00hrs on his way to the loo, Joe had a panic attack and fainted. This is something that has occured a couple of times - during the first two days of getting up and about and almost on one ocassion on his first trip to the loo on his first day back home. This seems to be brought about by a number of things - low sugar levels maybe from the lack of eating and more worryingly through a lack of belief that he/we can cope without support of either a 2nd person (Me being at work) or nurses. A slightly worrying development and not one that I'd want to see become an aspect of his personality - panic attacks...

I've just looked at the NHS website http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/phobias/Pages/Panicattacks.aspx
This looks like something we need to be on top of, I noted that in the hospital the physio had a good range of distraction techniques which I employed when he had the start of an episode at home on his first day back. Some of the technique looks quite harsh - talking to the sufferer quite sternly getting them to either sing or recite a list of England cricket players - something like that to move their mind away from the sense of hopelessness and not being able to do the thing that they are confronted with. In the short term if these panics are related only to the belief issues around whether he can walk on his crutches, that's promising as he'll surely only improve. What I don't want is for the panics to suddenly start occuring in other aspects of his life where he faces challenges as usually he's able to deal with these okay.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Panic-disorder/Pages/self%20help.aspx

Joes progress #2

Monday 16th April.

Today we had another visit to the hospital, we were due to have the appointment at 2pm, but they rang earlier and asked if we could come in straight away as the consultant had assumed that the fracture clinic was staffed all day whereas it wasn't.

We rushed in getting our second use of the wheelchair that we had to hire. Still dead awkward getting him in and out of the car again simply because of the weight of the cast. The visit was short but painful for Joe and this time I managed to brig myself to have a look at the injury and what they've done.

1. The hole where the bone came through; that's doing very well with a series of tears all healing and stitched together, the appearance is that the scarring from that looks as though it's going to be minimal.
2. The hole where the skin tore; that was pretty gruesome. It's stitched and connected at both ends, but there's a gaping great hole about the size of a "Two'sy" marble and depth of a normal marble maybe a little deeper, this is open and raw. Talking to the consultant, he said that it's not muscle tissue damage it's fat tissue and that over a period of weeks the body will grow the fat tissue back again. Of the two injuries it looks like this cut is the one that will scar the most. He said that they had considered skin grafts and plastic surgery, but he said they're pretty certain the body will repair itself and this should be fine in the longer term.

Once all the dressing had been done he was back to normal 'None pain' status withing a matter of minutes and on returning home Michelle noticed that the anti-biotics have nearly run their course. The next visit will be to the local clinic and a normal nurse will dress the wound as it's now deemed to be in a good state of recovery. The following visit will be with the consultant at the hospital on Friday and then they'll decide what the next step is.

The Cast; There's no news on the cast and he's still going to have to struggle with the massive cast which makes it really awkward and difficult to get about, but every day he becomes more confident with it, so maybe on Wednesday, Michelle will be able to get to the local clinic on her own? We'll have to wait and see. So all in all things look like they're going in the right direction.

Joe's recovery

Everything seems to be fine and going well for Joe, he's a tough little boy and very brave. He had a good day yesterday, that improved all day long with each sleep and meal it seemed. Today he seems to have plateaud a bit. He had a good nights sleep and woke up and was a bit teary - it's beginning to dawn on him how he's now going to be incapacitated and what that means in terms of boredom and frustration. He was due to go on an adventure week with all his school mates mid May, he goes to Karate, he plays for his school football team, we were all in training for the new cricket season, the list goes on.

He looked a lot better physically today right from the outset, but he goes back to theatre tomorrow to have the tear across the leg sewn up better as the swelling didn't allow for that to be closed up that well on the first day. I think today he's been worrying about that and despite the way he looks physically he's been very subdued obviously with a lot of thoughts on his mind. I think he's really concerned that there's an expectation that he'll be up and about some time on Tuesday, which seems to be the plan. I get the impression he feels that up till later today he was really concerned that any movement in his good leg will require the engaging of his hips and therefore some movement through his smashed leg. But we had a stroke of luck, because we were just starting to massage his good leg with the theory of getting the blood circulating to cure some pins and needles sensations, when a physio came through the ward to look at another lad. Michelle stopped him and he had a quick chat saying that it wasn't his place really to advise as he had no info, but he then said - looking at the good leg "Yeah do what you're doing and encourage him to flex his toes and ankle and help him get that knee mobile and bend his leg", he noticed the bruising on his swollen ankle and said to the nurse to give us some ice packs and help to reduce the swelling and bruising. Within another 20 minutes or so, Joe had his leg bent at 45 degrees at the knee and had got past the fear of even moving his leg, so that was good. So for the rest of the afternoon we had him (With assistance) having his leg flat and then bent for an hour or so.

We've had to move him around in the bed a bit and slowly it seems as though he's aware that upper body movement and small hip region movement doesn't mean automatic agony in his lower leg. He can still wiggle all of his toes in the bad leg and can feel the toes when touched, but he says doing that causes pain.

The knee ligament thing I mentioned, I'm not so clear about at the minute and Michelle seemed to think that was a longer term objective and the nurses on the ward said that if he's got metal in his legs he's not going to be having any MRI scans till that's removed.

Overall, it all still looks positive in the longer term at the minute. How long it would take for any bone or blood poisoning to show up I haven't got a clue, but I'm sure that's something they'd check. With regards the bone damage, the surgeon seemed more than happy with what he'd done, saying that it was very minimal and that what was removed would soon grow back and that in the greater scheme of things was almost insignificant - it was a scraping rather than a bigger action as such.

Tomorrow will be another rough day I'd imagine, but hopefully after tomorrow things will start to get better. At the moment he hasn't got much of an appetite but that may be down to the mixture of morphine, paracetamol, nurofen and amoxicillin and the fear of having to pooh in the state that he's in, but we got over that as well today and it was no-where near as traumatic as any of us imagined, so perhaps once he's got past tomorrow he'll turn a positive corner?