customising life

Two weeks ago it was 4 months since I broke my collar bone, and in the last month I’ve been doing Pilates, a bit of indoor soccer, squash, swimming and even unloading containers of fans at work. All the professionals I spoke to said it would take from three to six months to fully heal, and although I don’t intend to get back into real physical things (no more indoor for now), I wanna call this sucker healed.

I even thought I’d throw in a nice photo of my lumpy bone, as of about 4 weeks ago, I tried to scan my x-rays, but they just don’t want to seem to work at the moment.

Ai! I’ve been way to busy of late, and a lot of things have been going on, not all good too.

Work got extremely busy and actually stressful (first time for everything), but has slacked off in the last week. Our latest exhaust fan prototype has actually turned out much better than anticipated, and David and Philip have been very pleased with it. So much so that they have gone to our factory in Zhongshan, China with the prototype to get some early tooling costs and look for a suitable factory to manufacture a motor.

I’ve been particularly happy since the design is entirely mine, and quite a lot of money has been invested into my time and efforts. I didn’t really think about it before, but it feels really good to have come up with an idea, proved it in theory and simulation and then to finally have it in front of you and find that it really does work.

Now that this part of the project is pretty much over, I’d been testing this prototype for weeks, I can move onto some other things that have been lying in wait. Firstly, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time improving our testing procedures, to make them more efficient, as well as easier and quicker to perform. I got quite interested in the possibilities that our testing facility could provide.

I’ve also been involved in some business analysis (to clean up our service procedure) as well as some physical electrical stuff, like wiring PC controlled relays and switches. All in all, I am quite enjoying work.

My shoulder seems to be well on the way to fully recovered. It was a bit sore after lying on it for some time the other day, but has been coping with normal life (including Pilates at work, so glad I can do that again).

I also succumbed to peer pressure from Andrew and James and the guys and did register for indoor soccer. I don’t think I will plasy in the first half of the season, as it is probably too soon to get smashed again. Next year is definately in though, so that’s something to work for.

I’ve also just come out of a four year relationship, which ended in a way I’d rather have not seen it. It was quite a strange, surreal end to quite a long passage of my life.

Things have also been quite hard at home, probably due in some large part to the break, perhaps other things, like the lifestyle I’ve been leading since, also probably due to the fact that I really do want to move out of home.

Well there you go, you can see what I’m comfortable about talking about; 4 paragprahs for work, and four sentences for other important stuff.

Ah, but finally I saved all my data from my computer, using almost 20 DVDs, and have reinstalled Windows, which was a chapter in my life itself. I have lost count the number of times I’ve done it, and it never gets any easier or faster. I did however find out that Windows doens’t support my SATA drives and had to dig very hard to find the driver disks.

Tsk, tsk. Ubuntu didn’t ever have a problem. Anyway my disks look like they are not completely f-ed up, so I will install Xubuntu at my nearest convenience…

I saw an orthopaedic surgeon on Monday, who had a look at my X ray films, and my shoulder in the flesh, as well as moving my arm around.

It is so damn weak. The muscle mass is there, but it has absolutely no strength after three weeks in a sling. I find it pretty much impossible to raise my arm past my chest height.

He wasn’t too concerned with the new X ray, and still believes, as my GP does, that the fracture isn’t bad enough that it would require intervention and/or surgery.

Apparently the bump at the fracture will smooth itself out over the next 18 months to two years. Crazy. I should also start trying to use my arm out of the sling too, as in his opinion it is stable enough to do day-to-day things. Like cutting my steak, or tying my shoelace. Things I took for granted, and now rely on others to do.

I’m still not convinced about the look of my clavicle, but it has gotten better in the last couple of days, as I’ve started rolling my shoulder back, instead of slouching. I’m pushing it occasionally too, in my own stupid attempt at orthopaedics. If I snap it, be sure to jeer.

Finally some good news from a professional.

I had a progress X-ray yesterday, it’s been three weeks since this scenario started and it seems I’m going backward. The doctor at the X-ray, my physio and GP all agree that the angle of my fracture has increased.

Shit.

The only ‘good’ news is that my GP said she has seen worse fractures heal themselves. I’ll be seeing an orthopaedic surgeon next week, to get his opinion. Worst case is surgery and I get a nice rod inserted through my bone. I’ll be like Wolverine. And I’ll be strip-searched next time I travel over-seas too. Fun

At this stage I’m like tripling my calcium intake, and doing bugger-all. I think I’ve been doing a bit too much recently.

And I’m not very happy.

I noticed that my broken clavicle was looking a little wierd the other day when I got out of the shower.

It kind of looks like it’s protruding too far forward. It could be that I can’t yet hold up my shoulder without the help of my sling. Thank God I can type two handed again.

So being diligent I got the girls at work to check it out. Yep they think it looks wierd too. To make matters worse, my physio gave me the ‘hmm’ diagnosis, so I’m off for some more X-rays to see how the healing is going and whether or not this is an issue.

Freaking bones.