My Injury & Surgery Recovery Process
I’ve been asked about this a multitude of times. So I finally wrote it all out in the most bite-size way I could.
I managed to go 33 years of being pretty athletic and thrill-seeking before hurting myself badly enough to need surgery, but it finally happened last July while on the climbing wall. I didn’t even fall! It happened while I was on the wall. Just an awkward foot position which, when I put weight on it, created enough tension in the bits and pieces that make up the outer part of the ankle to tear and snap and fracture. Considering how innocuous it looks from the outside, the soft tissues beneath my skin underwent a fairly violent upheaval.
To be exact, the fibularis bravis split in two and a piece of fascia called a retinaculum pinged off the malleolus, fracturing the bone, and leaving the tendons of the fibularis brevis and longus to roam free, not do their job of controlling ankle movement, and dump pools of blood into my foot. It was ugly.
Ergo: surgery. And so began the recovery.
I’ll now stop writing my own personal experience and proceed through the rest of this from a point of view of how it might be relevant to OTHERS recovering from injury and/or surgery.
Because every injury and every person’s recovery will be different. But there are also many many similarities.
Here is what I learned:
Recovery isn’t linear.
Just because on Monday you feel a hundred times better than on Sunday, doesn’t mean that Tuesday will also be a hundred times better than Monday.
This is important because you may wake up thinking you’re ready to sign up to a power yoga class and in fact you need another day in bed. And I know as much as anyone, those days in bed get SUPER tiresome, but….
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2. Rest is necessary. And it’s harder than you might think.
Rest is necessary. Your body is already getting a workout by doing alllllll of the things necessary to heal those damaged tissues. It’s easy to forget the work our bodies do while we carry on with our lives — even now as you read this, your body is creating millions of new red blood cells every minute, fighting off invading infections, digesting your food, pumping your blood, exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen, and getting rid of waste and toxins.
When you’re healing from a major injury or surgery, your body is also dealing with the task of repairing the tissues that have been damaged or cut into by surgeons, and it has introduced a high level of inflammation to the area to keep it safe from potential contaminants. I’m not a doctor, so I dunno, but there are probably loads of other things going on too.
Basically, it takes a lot of energy!
PLUS, if you’re doing anything to put your nervous system into the sympathetic state — which your “fight or flight” state, then your body is going to think:
— Your body when the Sympathetic Nervous System is in charge
Being stressed, anxious, or pushing yourself too hard in any way will put your body into this sympathetic state. Rest is your ticket to the parasympathetic state — the rest & repair state.
If you’re used to being on the go all the time, being active, being independent and in charge, then slowing down to allow your body to rest is going to be your NEW WORKOUT.
That’s how I had to think about it. I find myself ridden with feelings of guilt if I don’t workout 6 times a week at least, which is normally good motivation. But when recovering, I had to reframe my mindset. Because just as a workout is hard, and you LOVE that feeling of challenging yourself and getting your muscles to burn, you can introduce the concept of rest as a workout — because it’s also hard, and you may have to exercise your PATIENCE.
Does that make sense?
Rest can be a workout too, just a different type of working out.
Having said that, it is important you still move…
3. Movement is medicine
Our bodies AND our minds are healthier when we move. We are NOT designed to stay still for hours and hours, let alone days and days. For sure, the days immediately following your surgery you may not feel like getting out of bed at all, and you should absolutely honour that.
But as soon as you feel an urge to get up and walk around a bit, your muscles are aching to stretch, your joints are asking to move, then you should honour that!
“Rest” doesn’t necessarily mean “not moving.”
Rest means allowing your body the time and energy to heal and recover.
And you can help your body do that by moving gently to help the flow of blood, oxygen, and lymphs.
You’ll have to move differently to how you’re used to.
You’ll have to move slowly, and for shorter amounts of time, and no doubt you’ll need to modify your movements so as not to irritate the injured area.
But you can still move in a healing, medicinal way.
4. Food matters
Remember, there are MILLIONS of things going on underneath your skin that you don’t have to think about because your body is taking care of it. But if you think about it, you have some control over these functions, because you control how you fuel your body. It’s like how you don’t have to think about how a car works to get from A to B, but you can choose if you put petrol or diesel in it (BTW if you put petrol in a diesel car you totally F it up. Don’t do that.)
Your food is your body’s main fuel, along with your breath and your hydration.
If you feed your body junk then it has the EXTRA task of detoxifying that junk out of your system, and doing so with LESS useful nutrients. So give your body food that helps it — free of toxins and loaded with nutrients.
Eat whole, natural foods; the closer to how it’s found in nature, the better. Skip the processed foods, skip the sugar, and most definitely skip the alcohol. Those are TOXINS to your body on the best of days, but right now your body needs all the help it can get.
Stick to high quality sources of protein, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates. Eat organic as much as possible. Drink mineral rich water. Season your food with spices, herbs, and Celtic sea salt, instead of adding in gunk that’s in most sauces and dressings.
If this kind of eating is new to you, trust me, you’ll soon feel better for it. Trust nature. Trust the physiology of your body.
I’ve written more on nutrition over on my nutrition blogs.
5. Rehab rehab rehab
I personally think everyone should go to physiotherapists like we go to our dentist — at least twice a year for a check up —-even if everything is healthy and problem-free. But MOST DEFINITELY see someone if you’re injured or in recovery.
Even if your surgery isn’t from an injury — you will still have imbalances, scar tissue, and adverse neural patterning from ANY surgery. Even it’s your your pinky toe. Our bodies are totally connected so an “attack” (which is how your body views surgery) anywhere on your body will affect the rest of you.
A good physiotherapist, in my opinion, should also be trained in acupuncture, myofascial meridians and properties, and understand the role of the nervous system and brain on movement. Look for a physiotherapist who has trainings BEYOND just physiotherapy, who includes practices from other healthcare disciplines.
These people are rare. But they’re out there. They probably have long waiting lists and crappy websites because they don’t need anything but word-of-mouth to get clients. I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy to find them. But they’re there.
When you find one of these magicians (they’re not magicians but they seem like it), go see that person weekly at LEAST, until your body is back to balance and ideally, stronger and more mobile than before your injury!
If that’s not feasible, please please please at least do the exercises this physiotherapist gives you!
I am CERTAIN that this is one of the main reasons I recovered as quickly and as well as I did. (No I cannot tell you who my magician physio is because he’s not taking new clients :-(. Sowwy.)
6. Biohacking
Every item on this list so far could be an entire BOOK. It’s hard keeping this all brief. And this item will probably be the hardest. But here goes.
Biohacking the idea that we can use our knowledge of how the body works to accelerate the wonderful things our bodies do.
Supplementation could be seen as a form of biohacking. Taking the right supplements for you, and good quality ones, can be like giving your body a personal assistant to help it do its job. Magnesium, vitamin D, and zinc are three I recommend taking. Milk thistle is also good for helping detoxify the liver, which is needed if you’ve been under general anaesthetic.
Another example of biohacking is cold exposure. Dunk yourself in cold water to accelerate the anti-inflammation your body is already working on, and accelerate your immune functions.
Red light therapy is another form of biohacking that I used when recovering, and which I still use now as often as possible. (MY Blog on that can be found HERE.)
Breathing techniques such as Wim Hof breathing have been shown to improve immunity and bring balance to the hormones — something that could very well be out of whack following surgery or injury.
If you want to learn more about biohacking, I encourage you to go binge-listen to a few of my favourite podcasts: Bulletproof Radio, Ben Greenfield Fitness, Zestology, JJ Virgin Lifestyle Show, and Align Podcast. Listen to these guys during your commute or instead of putting on a TV show or music playlist — find time to get this information into your life! They are always so full of useful information!