June 15, 2022 It’s been 4 days since my last hike and I am really out of sorts. I am beginning to see how being outdoors in nature and sunshine, exercising, has a mood-altering effect. I immediately worry about getting fat and losing conditioning and endurance, even though I only have to stay off my foot for about a week. I either have a stress fracture in the navicular bone in my right foot, or I’ve seriously strained a tendon. I’ve been getting acupuncture treatment since Monday, but I'm going to give it a rest today. I think about going to the Doc for a diagnosis, but if he tells me it’s broken or that I have to stay off it a month, I think I’ll die–literally. I can see how I slipped into depression in China and during the pandemic due to injury and illness and the resultant lack of exercise and I am terrified of that happening now, especially since everything has been going so well in Jejudo. I’m giving it until Friday and hoping a near-week of rest will allow enough healing to resume hiking. I am doing a bit of body-weight strength training and yoga, but I need to be outside in the sunshine of nature to feel whole. I feel moderately perturbed that I sustained an injury with only 45km left to hike on 4 Olle trails! I was about a week away from my goal and on track to finish by June 30. Damnit! However, I could tell that my body needed rest and my mind and heart needed a break from the long drives back and forth to the east side: over 140km and nearly 3 hours round-trip. At present, I am forced to rest and also face why the drives were so fatiguing and why I became so impatient and aggressive on the road. That’s unlike me. After inquiring into some solutions for my road rage, a friend suggested music, audiobooks, or taking the bus. I have an old POS car with only radio, and the stations have a lot of irritating talk and less music here, and I haven’t figured how to connect my phone to the speakers. It was never an issue until I started driving over 2 hours per day, 3 times per week, to far-off Olle trails. I need to get Spotify up and running. Alternatively, my friend gave me her Korean study guides with mp3s, so that would help. While the bus ride wouldn't be too bad, because all the buses have wifi, I could just relax and enjoy scenery, and the trip would only be about 30 more minutes than driving, I also worry about missing a transfer or misreading the bus schedule. Outside the city, the “country buses” only come once an hour and sometimes don’t come at all! So I would be stuck, literally, and have to take an expensive taxi back. But I can tell I’m also putting up roadblocks with this type of thinking. I’ll experiment with a bus trip on my day off. I seriously miss hiking, being outdoors, being in nature, and exploring. I miss adventure and serendipitous meets! Acupuncture with moxibustion, electrical stimulation, and cupping after blood-letting. Day 1 was acupuncture, then a heating pad, cupping, blood-letting, and then final cupping. Day 2 was acupuncture with electrical stimulation (damn that hurt!), followed by heating pad for 20 minutes. After acupuncture, I feel tired and drained, but the treatment always heals! And it usually doesn't "hurt", it's just a sensation of intensity or discomfort, but with the work directly on an injury, there is an initial sensation of pain, which diminishes.
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