Experimenting on ice.

I went skating again this weekend. It was less painful than the first time and I was able to do much more but it still hurts a lot because of the hardware. I called the doctor this morning to see about scheduling surgery to get it out and am now waiting for a return phone call.

I think the biggest difference in my skating this time was more confidence. I'm still tentative and on the verge of a mini panic attack when I lose balance or almost fall but I am not as timid. I would really like to get that first fall over with because I know it will make me a little less fearful but I'm certainly not going to fall on purpose to get it done. So yeah, I was very careful this go around but definitely more speedy.

I did some forward outside edges and was able to do those competently. They still looked shaky though as I recover some of the balance in my left ankle. After doing several passes of outside edges I did a couple of waltz 8s. They were disproportionate and unstable but they happened. I guess that's a start. I wasn't able to work my way back to the center because my circles were uneven. Again, this ties into the fact that my left ankle is still so sore and unstable. The step forward onto my LFO edge is fine but the RFO step forward is really painful. Go figure.

Spins happened albeit slowly. I did some very slow two foot spins and a couple where I picked the free leg up to make an equally slow one foot spin. Ever since the surgery, I have not recovered sensation in the outside part of my left foot. The doc says it can take quite awhile for the nerves to regenerate so hopefully I will eventually get feeling back. In the meantime, it is difficult to get a sense of the where my rocker is on my left foot considering I can't feel half of it. I used to just put weight on my pinky toe but now I can't feel my pinky toe so...you know, crap spins.

I felt adventurous enough to try jumping. Mostly, I just wanted to see if I was too scared to jump after the last time jumping left me with broken bones. I did a (very tiny) waltz jump. Guess what? I'm not too scared to jump :)

Overall, it was a good practice. I'm still testing the waters so to speak and there is still a lot of pain associated with the hardware but I know as soon as I get it out, I can start to really work on getting back to where I was. One nice thing that happened during practice: a little boy was skating near me and he fell. As is my custom, I skated up to him to ask if he was okay. He said yes and got up on his own. When he was fully upright he beamed at me and said "you skate really good" and then he was off. It meant the world to me knowing that I can still "skate really good" after all I've been through :)