It is almost 8pm now, I just finished a few games of Foosball after dinner, or "Baby Foot" as they call it in France. I suck, let's just leave it at that. Had it been bubble hockey, then we would have a totally different story. Wow I am too competitive. At least that was the impression my teammate/ 70 year old man gave me when I yelled at him for not playing good enough defense.
Alright, moving on. So this morning I was up and ready to rock at 5am, when the nurse came for a blood sample. I could hear her going from room to room. As much as I hoped this unwanted visitor would pass by my room by mistake, she eventually came knocking at 6am. I said "why do I need a blood test, I am here to strengthen my knee." Apparently it is just protocol.....
So with breakfast at 8am, I knew it would not be bacon and eggs or anything like that, though I was hoping for something other than a baguette and jam, but that is exactly what it was. Fine no problem, I was shocked when I was 8 years old at the French breakfast, but now, it was just wishful thinking for something different. Maybe tomorrow?
Apparently every Tuesday there is a meeting at 9am, so my first activity of the day started at 11am with the strength training for my leg. They had me all hooked up to a machine with a computer, it was really cool, the only problem was that there was a bit too much discomfort in the movements that were to be performed, so that will have to wait for another day. But we did work on some static holds for 40 seconds with about 45lbs, and those were very good for my quad muscles.
From there was lunch, no highlights to speak of, so at 1pm I was in the pool, performing most of the same movements I did yesterday, except this time there was some resistance attached to my ankle. This was ok, and as soon as I was finish I went right back to the gym again, for some more extensive quad training for 1 hour. Then finally finishing off with physio at then end of the day, where I was hooked up to some electric stimulation, connected to a computer showing my strength output. On the screen there was a pattern that showed where I had to control my leg contraction. Starting off at 40%, then moving up to 65%, up to 100% then back to 65% and 45%, forcing me to control every movement, and connect neurally.
Since the treatment ends at 4pm, I retreated to my room for a couple of hours and read a book my parents got me, though it was not the book I had requested ;)
The doctor stopped by, as they do on all Tuesdays, and wanted to see how things were progressing. I was pretty happy with this part, because it shows that they are staying on top of things. Then it was dinner time, we were having soup, roast beef, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Not really much else to say, the roast beef was looking a bit weird, kind of greenish, I did not eat it as I was a bit worried about getting sick or some sort of disease. Though this one old man insisted it was fine. For some reason I did not trust his judgment, and I promise, it had nothing to do with him having only one leg.
I started writing this entry a few hours ago, but the France vs. Bosnia soccer game was on, so I watched it with one of the other guys here, as he invited me to have a drink and watch the game. By that I was assuming just some orange juice or coke or something, since we do not have many options for drinks here. Then he pulls out this bottle of whiskey that his girlfriend brought him. hahaha
Bedtime, tomorrow will be my longest/best day!
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Monday, 6 September 2010
Start of year 4
Hello again everyone, my excuse for not writing is that I take the summer off from blogging/I get lazy and forget. So to get started here in year 4 of my adventure in France, I am currently getting some therapy done on my knee.
This summer I had my knee scoped to clean up some meniscus and since then I have had a couple set backs in my battle back to 100%. I was feeling really good at one point this summer after about 10 weeks post op, so I went pretty hard on the ice, which resulted in some unwanted swelling, forcing me to take a step back from training and resulting in loss of muscle mass in the quad. As much as I tried to get back to training, the more it would swell up.
So let's fast forward to today, I have been in France for just over a month and after seeing the surgeon a few times, with no real improvement in his tactics, we have taken it to the next level. I am in Metz at a rehabilitation centre, where I get 2 hours/day of physio, 2 hours/day of strength training and 1 hour/day of under water training. Not to mention 3 meals a day and my own room with tv and internet (where I lie as we speak).
Note: this is not all athletes here, we have many people fresh off operations, so that includes many old people too :)
Since I am all alone here in the evening, I guess I could even keep a daily log of what we are doing here to get me back on the ice as soon as possible. And include to my Canadian readers, some of the differences we have here in France, as opposed to what we might see back home.
6:00am- Alarm goes off to wake up in Epinal.
6:30am- drive to Thionville with Marion and her dad (in his BMW)
6:31am- I fall asleep
8:20am- Arrive at ADAPT and check into my room
too much detail???? Ok I will cut it a bit shorter and get to the interesting stuff
9am- Nurse arrives, takes my MRIs and a history of what has been done so far and gathers all info to relay to the Dr. and physios
10am- See Doctor (though the doc I am supposed to see is not here? Kind of typical in France during vacation time, but it doesn't get less frustrating)
11am- First physio treatment, assessment and Electric stimulation to try to get my quad muscles firing again.
12pm- Lunch
1pm- In the pool, wearing a tight swim suit, I start off doing squats while balancing on a board under water, then progress to single leg knee drives up/down, then leg cycles, adduction/abduction, finishing with leg cycles again a walking laps for a cool down. Time of work was about 45 minutes non stop.
2pm- Strength training, today was just to measure where I was at with weights before performing the whole circuit tomorrow. This session focuses mainly on upper body, while the morning session will focus on strengthening my legs.
3pm- More physio assessments and tests, followed by some diagonal leg raises with manual resistance from the physio. This will strengthen the adductors/abductors as well as the quads, while keeping the leg in the extended position
4pm- Ice for the knee and I had a little snack in my room and spent time with Marion before dinner.
6pm- dinner
Well that turned out to be longer than expected....... But now that day 1 is over, day 2 and so on will have less of a lead up and I can just log the stuff I did, that way it will mentally reinforce the work I do as well! And to keep my readers interested I will have to include some funny stories or just odd occurrences.
So today, let me think...... Well at every meal, the entire centre eats at the same time and we are all assigned a seat at a table, with the same people everyday. The the meal arrives it is on a platter, so we do not have our individual plates of food. I arrived a bit late because I was still getting some treatment on my knee and the nurse shows me to my seat. (As I mentioned above, there are lots of old people here.) To my amazement, the room is 75% old people, with an average age of probably 70 (exaggerating), so my table has one guy my age and the rest around 70+. One guy was missing a leg.
Ok, so I had no idea what to expect, is everyone depressed here and we all just eat in silence? After all, the guy next to me has no leg.... So I sit down, I say hello, my accent sticks out like a sore thumb, but also serves as a great ice breaker and before I knew it, the whole table was talking. I did not always understand what they were saying because the woman in the wheelchair across from me spoke very softly and with an Alsace accent (German-like). The food was ok, there was rice, roast beef, Greek salad and bread, and the huge advantage to eating with these nice old people, was that they barely eat at all!!! So I cleaned up the plate of roast beef at lunch time and gladly took the elderly lady's steak at dinner time.
It turned out to be a good day, the one man at the table who is delivered an egg carton full of pills said "we are not going to start crying, everybody here is sad. We are going to have a good time." While continuing to speak, he stops and starts winking an a woman from the other table. He was convinced she was just starring at him, turns out she was checking out the menu, which was located, directly above his head.
I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings :)
This summer I had my knee scoped to clean up some meniscus and since then I have had a couple set backs in my battle back to 100%. I was feeling really good at one point this summer after about 10 weeks post op, so I went pretty hard on the ice, which resulted in some unwanted swelling, forcing me to take a step back from training and resulting in loss of muscle mass in the quad. As much as I tried to get back to training, the more it would swell up.
So let's fast forward to today, I have been in France for just over a month and after seeing the surgeon a few times, with no real improvement in his tactics, we have taken it to the next level. I am in Metz at a rehabilitation centre, where I get 2 hours/day of physio, 2 hours/day of strength training and 1 hour/day of under water training. Not to mention 3 meals a day and my own room with tv and internet (where I lie as we speak).
Note: this is not all athletes here, we have many people fresh off operations, so that includes many old people too :)
Since I am all alone here in the evening, I guess I could even keep a daily log of what we are doing here to get me back on the ice as soon as possible. And include to my Canadian readers, some of the differences we have here in France, as opposed to what we might see back home.
6:00am- Alarm goes off to wake up in Epinal.
6:30am- drive to Thionville with Marion and her dad (in his BMW)
6:31am- I fall asleep
8:20am- Arrive at ADAPT and check into my room
too much detail???? Ok I will cut it a bit shorter and get to the interesting stuff
9am- Nurse arrives, takes my MRIs and a history of what has been done so far and gathers all info to relay to the Dr. and physios
10am- See Doctor (though the doc I am supposed to see is not here? Kind of typical in France during vacation time, but it doesn't get less frustrating)
11am- First physio treatment, assessment and Electric stimulation to try to get my quad muscles firing again.
12pm- Lunch
1pm- In the pool, wearing a tight swim suit, I start off doing squats while balancing on a board under water, then progress to single leg knee drives up/down, then leg cycles, adduction/abduction, finishing with leg cycles again a walking laps for a cool down. Time of work was about 45 minutes non stop.
2pm- Strength training, today was just to measure where I was at with weights before performing the whole circuit tomorrow. This session focuses mainly on upper body, while the morning session will focus on strengthening my legs.
3pm- More physio assessments and tests, followed by some diagonal leg raises with manual resistance from the physio. This will strengthen the adductors/abductors as well as the quads, while keeping the leg in the extended position
4pm- Ice for the knee and I had a little snack in my room and spent time with Marion before dinner.
6pm- dinner
Well that turned out to be longer than expected....... But now that day 1 is over, day 2 and so on will have less of a lead up and I can just log the stuff I did, that way it will mentally reinforce the work I do as well! And to keep my readers interested I will have to include some funny stories or just odd occurrences.
So today, let me think...... Well at every meal, the entire centre eats at the same time and we are all assigned a seat at a table, with the same people everyday. The the meal arrives it is on a platter, so we do not have our individual plates of food. I arrived a bit late because I was still getting some treatment on my knee and the nurse shows me to my seat. (As I mentioned above, there are lots of old people here.) To my amazement, the room is 75% old people, with an average age of probably 70 (exaggerating), so my table has one guy my age and the rest around 70+. One guy was missing a leg.
Ok, so I had no idea what to expect, is everyone depressed here and we all just eat in silence? After all, the guy next to me has no leg.... So I sit down, I say hello, my accent sticks out like a sore thumb, but also serves as a great ice breaker and before I knew it, the whole table was talking. I did not always understand what they were saying because the woman in the wheelchair across from me spoke very softly and with an Alsace accent (German-like). The food was ok, there was rice, roast beef, Greek salad and bread, and the huge advantage to eating with these nice old people, was that they barely eat at all!!! So I cleaned up the plate of roast beef at lunch time and gladly took the elderly lady's steak at dinner time.
It turned out to be a good day, the one man at the table who is delivered an egg carton full of pills said "we are not going to start crying, everybody here is sad. We are going to have a good time." While continuing to speak, he stops and starts winking an a woman from the other table. He was convinced she was just starring at him, turns out she was checking out the menu, which was located, directly above his head.
I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings :)
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Happy Mother's Day!
On Thursday afternoon I took a flight from Paris to Detroit, mainly because the month of May carries great importance (for my mom). We have mother's day, which is always a big deal in our family, which usually entails the whole gang heading for a big mother's day brunch at the Tunnel B.B.Q. Restaurant. We are actually leaving in a few hours to go there! Then it is my mom's birthday on the 25th of May, so being here in Canada at my home in Windsor this month in a way makes up for the 9 months I spend in France each year.
The NHL playoffs also make it a good time to be home, too bad Montreal lost last night, but I am confident they can rebound in game 6 at home to even the series. Spending time with my two brothers and my father while watching the Habs play is a pretty special time.
Since being back, my brother Gabe and I have been playing quite a bit of NHL 10 on Playstation, we always find time to get a few games in, something we have done together since the SEGA days of NHL hockey games.
In terms of my own hockey, the future is not clear at the moment, normally I would like to have everything sorted out but it just seems that this year will take a bit longer. I will keep everyone posted and I will try to keep my attention on this blog and try to update as much as I can!
On a sad note, our family dog Coco passed away during the afternoon just before I got home on Thursday. I did not get to see her but am happy to think about all the time I spent with her last summer! I miss you Coco.
The NHL playoffs also make it a good time to be home, too bad Montreal lost last night, but I am confident they can rebound in game 6 at home to even the series. Spending time with my two brothers and my father while watching the Habs play is a pretty special time.
Since being back, my brother Gabe and I have been playing quite a bit of NHL 10 on Playstation, we always find time to get a few games in, something we have done together since the SEGA days of NHL hockey games.
In terms of my own hockey, the future is not clear at the moment, normally I would like to have everything sorted out but it just seems that this year will take a bit longer. I will keep everyone posted and I will try to keep my attention on this blog and try to update as much as I can!
On a sad note, our family dog Coco passed away during the afternoon just before I got home on Thursday. I did not get to see her but am happy to think about all the time I spent with her last summer! I miss you Coco.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Put me in Coach!!!
We just arrived back from Angers a few hours ago from our 2 games in the best of 5 series. We are currently tied 2-2 with the 5th game set for Saturday night in Briancon. Having been sidelined since the early moments of Game 2 vs. Strasbourg, I have desperately been working to try to get back in the lineup.
The first time I tried to practice was on Thursday, the day before the series opened against Angers. I did not last long and made an early exit to the showers. I tried again Monday morning, to see if my ankle was strong enough to at least make the road trip to Angers, in case of emergency. Since Monday it has progressively been getting better and in the morning skate yesterday I felt about 75%, but having won the night before, the coach decided to keep the same lineup and to give me a few more days of valuable rest.
Unfortunately for us, we lost last night, and Angers forced a 5th game. So with a few extra days for this ligament to heal, I will be in the lineup on Saturday night. Not sure how "Pain-Free" I will be, but this is the playoffs, and I have to help my team win this very important game. Depending on how things go these next two days, I could end up only playing on the power play, where we have struggled to get goals, especially last night where we went 0 for 6. Not saying that I will make the difference, but this is usually the strong point in my game and I am hoping to provide some good scoring chances for us with shots from the blue line.
Watching my team go to battle over these last 2 weeks has been very hard to handle, knowing that I could do nothing more than cheer them on from the stands. To feel even closer to the action, I even did some commentating on the Alpes 1 radio station, while trying to send some positive energy to my teammates!
After the game, I told my coach: "Next game I am playing, no matter what." I have to be out there with them, going to battle, playing hurt and making sacrifices. We have been together since August 10th and I will be with them the rest of the way from now on!
Coach, I'm going in!!!
The first time I tried to practice was on Thursday, the day before the series opened against Angers. I did not last long and made an early exit to the showers. I tried again Monday morning, to see if my ankle was strong enough to at least make the road trip to Angers, in case of emergency. Since Monday it has progressively been getting better and in the morning skate yesterday I felt about 75%, but having won the night before, the coach decided to keep the same lineup and to give me a few more days of valuable rest.
Unfortunately for us, we lost last night, and Angers forced a 5th game. So with a few extra days for this ligament to heal, I will be in the lineup on Saturday night. Not sure how "Pain-Free" I will be, but this is the playoffs, and I have to help my team win this very important game. Depending on how things go these next two days, I could end up only playing on the power play, where we have struggled to get goals, especially last night where we went 0 for 6. Not saying that I will make the difference, but this is usually the strong point in my game and I am hoping to provide some good scoring chances for us with shots from the blue line.
Watching my team go to battle over these last 2 weeks has been very hard to handle, knowing that I could do nothing more than cheer them on from the stands. To feel even closer to the action, I even did some commentating on the Alpes 1 radio station, while trying to send some positive energy to my teammates!
After the game, I told my coach: "Next game I am playing, no matter what." I have to be out there with them, going to battle, playing hurt and making sacrifices. We have been together since August 10th and I will be with them the rest of the way from now on!
Coach, I'm going in!!!
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