Better to Break Your Leg.....

"You know what I think? It's better to break a man's leg than his heart."

I can't watch running movies now that I'm injured. It's really just too much for me to handle. I haven't even had the desire to pop in one of the Pre movies, or anything else like that. However, on the late nights where my leg does hurt I throw in a horse movies from time to time.  O.K. that's a lie. I've been watching Seabiscuit pretty much constantly these past couple of days. And by that I mean when it ends I just restart it.

The reason I've grown attached to this movie is pretty obvious (semi-spoiler alert). During one part of the movie Seabiscuit's leg gets injured and he's pronounced lame. His jockey, Red, has also broken his leg. So they spend months trying to heal together and come back to win a huge national race. This movie is the only therapy that's working.

 It throws me off a little bit because Toby McGuire plays Seabiscuit's jockey and unfortunately I have yet to watch the movie without expecting webs to shoot out of his hands as he's riding, or for him to say something about his "spidey senses" when he knows he's about to win. Luckily, McGuire is a decent actor so I get over this by the time the movie hits its climax.

But mostly I just like it because, though disguised as a horse movie, it's about running. I fell in love with it after a horse breaks his foot and is about to get shot. A trainer looks at the men surrounding him and says "just because he's banged up a little doesn't mean you throw a whole life away." Yeah....It  was indeed that line alone that sold me on this movie. Along with the quote at the beginning of this post...."better to break a man's leg than his heart".

I've extended my crutch-walks now to an hour now, and I don't have to take breaks anymore. I have calluses on my palms, bruises on my sides, and crazy, crazy, sore muscles in my other leg from crutching/hopping around everywhere with only one good leg. I'm not convinced that this is really the best thing for me to be doing. Then again, I'm convinced that it's the only thing that I CAN do right now in order to keep sane.

At the same time, I'm so gun-shy right now. I feel like anything that hurts could be another stress fracture, every time I do something, I'm afraid something else will break. I just feel so....fragile...which is so different than the "nothing can touch me" attitude I've had my entire life. I used to believe I was invincible in a sense. And now, I'm not so sure.

I only have a week (less than) to get over this fear. And one week to do everything I can to heal. Not, of course, that I'm expecting to get to walk. But I'd still like to do everything to give me a shot at it.
-I started drinking milk. And almond milk (which surprisingly has more calcium than regular milk.)
-I take 500mg of calcium twice a day, every day
-I haven't even tested my leg out.I haven't done anything that I wasn't specifically given permission to do. I haven't set it on the floor, put weight on it, havent tried aqua-jogging or swimming. I almost never take the boot off and I don't even like to look at it for extended periods of time. You know, just in case. This is EXTREMELY unlike me. Usually I'm obstinate and daring like that. Usually I do what I'm not supposed to. But this time is different

I'm O.K. with whatever happens 3 days from now. I'm fully aware that I may have to be in the boot for longer. Or even on crutches for longer. All I care about is that I am able to run again someday. It doesn't have to be today, or tomorrow, or Monday, or even months from now. I care that once I do recover from this that it will be recovered and I won't have to deal with anymore injuries or fractures or what have you. All I want is to be able to be a runner for the rest of my life.