Welcome! As the title indicates this blog is about how you can learn to love
your crutches, before I get into some handy hints and tips let me tell you a
little about myself.
My name is Hannah Marshall, I am 18 years old and I am on my gap year between A levels and university. I decided to take this year out because to be honest at the time I didn't know what I wanted to do, so taking another year to decide seemed like a good idea and with the predicament I am in now it was a blessing in disguise! In this year I am going to resit a few exams to get my grades up, work to get some extra cash behind me and as I do this I am going to live at home to take advantage of free food and that for a bit longer. This all sounded like a pretty sweet deal until a month ago when I damaged my knee standing up from a funny position which is where my real story begins.
After numerous trips to and from the hospital it turned out that I had torn the cartilage in meniscus in my knee (the cartilage had already been weakened by years of running on concrete, I don’t want to scare anyone into the idea that by standing up you can tear muscles!) so to fix this the doctors decided that the best course of action due to my age and that it was a better idea to try and fix the torn cartilage instead of taking it out which they successfully did. Only problem is that I am now house bound with about 10cm of dressing around my leg and a huge leg brace on for a wee 6 weeks...yeey me. Oh and I can't forget about the lovely pair of crutches I now have stabled to my side every minute of the day! I have named them Tom and Jerry.
My name is Hannah Marshall, I am 18 years old and I am on my gap year between A levels and university. I decided to take this year out because to be honest at the time I didn't know what I wanted to do, so taking another year to decide seemed like a good idea and with the predicament I am in now it was a blessing in disguise! In this year I am going to resit a few exams to get my grades up, work to get some extra cash behind me and as I do this I am going to live at home to take advantage of free food and that for a bit longer. This all sounded like a pretty sweet deal until a month ago when I damaged my knee standing up from a funny position which is where my real story begins.
After numerous trips to and from the hospital it turned out that I had torn the cartilage in meniscus in my knee (the cartilage had already been weakened by years of running on concrete, I don’t want to scare anyone into the idea that by standing up you can tear muscles!) so to fix this the doctors decided that the best course of action due to my age and that it was a better idea to try and fix the torn cartilage instead of taking it out which they successfully did. Only problem is that I am now house bound with about 10cm of dressing around my leg and a huge leg brace on for a wee 6 weeks...yeey me. Oh and I can't forget about the lovely pair of crutches I now have stabled to my side every minute of the day! I have named them Tom and Jerry.
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| Just after surgery, chilling with my new leg brace and childhood toy Strawberry |
So now I am home, crutches in hand...what do I do now? The
hospital gave me loads of advice on how to keep my leg moving with little
exercises and on the internet I have found sites which give me advice on what
to eat and how to keep clean. However I have not yet came across a site which
gives me advice on what to do to keep sane; no advice on what to do when the
television explodes or when you have read very book in the house. That’s where
this blog comes in, I have decided to keep posted on how over these next 6
weeks I am going to keep myself going so then in the future if anyone is my
situation they can get some ideas on how to keep going. I have decided to try
at least 1 different thing a day in between revising for my January exams and I
will also post hints and tips along the way to help doing everyday tasks which
the hospital don’t help you with.
Hopefully
by the end of these 6 weeks I have learned to love my crutches
