Put your feet up, stay a while

I hate forced rest days. They drive me crazy. All I think about the entire time is the activity I had scheduled for the day and how great I would feel if I could just go along as planned.

But life doesn’t work that way.

Last week I got a mild concussion playing Ultimate Frisbee with my coworkers, and in the blink of an eye (or rather a painful smash of heads) I was sentenced to the couch for an unknown amount of time.

I was finally feeling like I was making progress. I was about to add in a third run into my week and my ankles were feeling pretty good. My PT was going well, and I had recovered from a PTT flair up within a few days (great news for someone who is struggling with fairly chronic tendonitis at this point). I was smashing PRs on my lifts and in general really enjoying my training.

While being forced to rest hasn’t made me the happiest of all people, it’s really the unknown that’s bothering me the most. Concussions are tricky to pin down and even harder to figure out when you are ready to come back. I was told to not exercise until the headaches are gone, and even then I can only move forward from brisk walking to something more fun if my head doesn’t protest. So far three days later and I haven’t made it past brisk walking.

My head looks fine. I feel energetic. And yet something small in my head is protesting rather loudly. For once I can’t just push through the discomfort and live my life the way I want. This time I have to actually listen. Take off the running shoes and put my feet up. I might just be here for a while.