The Offshore Voyaging Reference Site

Spring Photography on a Cane

JHH5II-19835

Several readers have asked me about how my recovery from my accident is coming along. (For those of you who don’t know, I was descending the Hillary Step, after summiting without oxygen, carrying a Sherpa who had collapsed, poor fellow, when I slipped and broke my leg. Oh, you don’t believe that? How about this?)

So the answer is that after three months on a walker (zimmer frame to you Brits) I graduated to a cane about six weeks ago, which is a huge improvement, if for no other reason than I can now go up and down stairs, albeit slowly, without having to do so on my butt.

Now the challenge is, through exercises and and slowly increasing the distances I walk each day, to build up the muscles in my leg, which were badly damaged by the fall and have atrophied over the past five months. The frustrating thing is that every time I try and push things a bit I go and pull something and set myself back. Of course I’m very patient and philosophical when this happens…shush Phyllis!

The good news is that both the surgeon who bolted me back together, with the aid of a bunch of titanium, and the physiotherapist I see twice a week, say that I should be as good as new eventually. The bad news is that eventually looks like being another six months or so.

Still, most weeks I manage to do something new that had been beyond me since the accident. Today that small victory was to get out in the car by myself and make a few photographs.

The light was crap, but it still felt good to have a camera in my hands again. That is once I figured out which of all those buttons to press when. Here are three more shots. Not great art, but making them was important to me.

Click on a photograph to enlarge.

JHH5II-19845
JHH5II-19869
JHH5II-19870