broken bones: insomnia foil?

It was spectacularly stupid.  Riding my bike to the Saturday morning farmers market on the last day in August here in Montpelier, my ball cap started to loosen as I picked up speed down a wicked hill.  Reaching for it to keep it on my head, I lost control of my bike, flying over the handlebars and landing on my hip.   I sat in the middle of the road stunned, contemplating my sudden change of status, from healthy male cyclist to injured citizen in need of medical attention.   It was one of the few times I did not wear my helmet.

I had a hip fracture – isolated fracture of the left greater trochanter.  In other terms, I broke off the pointy part of the hipbone that juts out from the outside part of the upper leg.  It is an unusual type of hip fracture, and perhaps not as serious as far as these injuries go, because neither the weight bearing integrity of my leg nor the hip joint itself were compromised in any way.

Aside a well-learned lesson in cycling safety, the pain, recovery, and having to tolerate a hopefully small number of weeks hobbling around on crutches, the experience has had a welcome silver lining thus far:  nearly normal amount of sleep.  It is amazing – I’ve sometimes been hitting 9 hours a night for over 2 weeks now, and feel human again, other than the broken hip part. 

The pain meds certainly had something to do with it at first – the vidcodin/acetominephin combo along with the diazepam prescription for pain relief and muscle relaxation really put my lights out.   But now that I’ve been weaning myself off of these, I’ve had some solid nights, (and even a long afternoon nap last Sunday!) without the meds.  And its been weeks since I’ve taken a benzodiazapene sleep aid (current Ativan prescription, with some left over Restoril, to which I’ve habituated). 

So hope springs eternal from the physical trauma of bone fracture.

vegetative trajectory

One by one they have been move to my personal "should not do list" - otherwise healthy, sustaining activities that would benefit anyone within the normal bounds range of person to person variation.  And the last item that has moved onto the list has put me on a decidedly depressive vegetative track.  Exercise in a way was my first pillar of self-maintenance.  It only went so far in terms of what my needs really were, but in my 20's it went just far enough to keep me from completely sinking.  And now, becuase of my recent hip fracture, I need to be relatively immoblile in order to heal.

The recent red-listing of exercise follows on the heels of meditation and yoga, my most profound and puzzling red-listing events.  It was almost 10 years ago that my intensive zen meditation regime tipped me over into the hell of chronic insomnia: my sincere and enthusiastic efforts to practice as a way of coping with our overstimulated culture and society and my particular sensitivities backfiring into a vitality-depleting black hole of sleep deprivation and death-warmed-over social isolation (I've had more than one alternative health care practitioner suggest that I stop meditating altogether, which I can't quite seem to do).  And the exacerbating effects of ashtanga yoga moved that activity onto the list as well.

So now not being able to exercise on top of it all has increased my feelings of embitteredness and futulity - probably only temporarily - the hip will heal, I'll be back on the trail, running, in the weightroom within 6-7 weeks or so, but it feels like the addition of a straw to the load that is teetering on being unbearably heavy.  I feel like shouting out to the world that conventional wisdom has it all wrong, that one should at all costs be wary of and avoid meditation and yoga, and instead seek solace in drugs and alcohol.  Indeed, my only solace these past few days is that my vicodin prescription has enabled 4 straight nights of 8 hours of sleep, allowing me to access a long-forgotten memory: the feelings of what its like to not be nearly incapacitated by sleep deprivation and not be at the end of one's wits.  But my body already habituates, and vicodin sleep is already becoming more difficult to attain.

I need activities that can function as inclusive practices that allow me to socialize with others.  Now that meditation and yoga, when I practice them, result in all sorts of strange involuntary physical sensations, movements, and vocalizations when I truly relax and settle mind and body in the the practices, it compels me to relegate my practices to the privacy of my own home, depriving me of the vehicles for social inteaction that I so desperately need.

What does one do when there is no apparent way out and the years on one's life clock tick inexorably onward towads eventual cessation?

How life slows down

It takes me 90 seconds to get out of the car, 2 minutes to put on a pair of socks, 30 seconds to pick up a piece of garlic that I had dropped on the floor while preparing food.  The realm of possibility in my life has just involuntarily constricted to an impossibly, yet liberatingly tight circle.  On satruday I fractured my hip after falling off my bike on the way to the local farmers market.  A fracture of the greater trochantor was the diagnosis.  I landed on the pavement on the point of my hip, and the bone in the immediate location fragmented, injuring a key attachment point for tendons/ligaments, but otherwise leaving the weight-bearing functions of the leg intact.

So its with great pain that I now move, but as hip fractures go, I suppose its mild.

So my world of possibility is now constricted.  I need help driving anywhere, cooking.  Gone for now are the agressive daily agendas of work, food cooking, working out, meditation, tai chi, music playing, and socializing.  Now, there is nowhere to go, and little that I can do.

So is it this that has restored my sleeping pattern, or is it the drugs.  Afterall, vocidin is powerful stuff - makes me feel a little lightheaded and relaxed.  They also gave me valium as a muscle relaxant in case I get muscle spasms (which I have'nt) and super strenght ibuprofin.  No wonder this stuff is restricted.

Because I can't do I don't do, and I don't think about what I can't do.  My agenda is now almost single pointed - healing.

Maybe filling in all the needs has been too exhausting, too taxing: single homeowner, housework, full time job, weight training, music practice, tai chi, yoga, cooking food, socializing, worrying about dating, and keeping my life organized, and dealing with persistant sleep deprivation (not necessarily in that order).  Most of it has come to a screeching halt.  Maybe this fracture is worth the pain and disruption.

And now I have time for blog writing, if but for perhaps a post or two.