Injury Updates

Joe first

Joe's doing well. As yet we've still not had any NHS exercise physio sessions, where he's supposed to be doing specific exercises aimed at strengthening his leg. We go along to the usual physio visits where the girl/bloke has a look at his progress, asks loads of questions about how he's getting on and what have you and then sets him a new series of slightly more challenging drills to do.

With regards the inuries and how they look here's an update

This is the whole area with the exit wound at the top and 'The hole' at the bottom (Right). It looks different in different light, in this image with the light coming in from the side you can see that it's not all filled in as yet, but it's getting there.

 In these images I've used a penny to give some sense of perspective and possibly over time show how the wound either does or doesn't shrink. The image here above is the Exit wound, which is coming along quite nicely. Joe does the massage of the scars himself, I offer to do it but he says that I massage it too hard and it's sore. Over the months watching him do it, it has been obvious that he has gradually increased the pressure he puts into the massaging, so hopefully what he is doing is beneficial. The issue with this scar is that it's directly over the area that was snapped, so it is still healing and it is tender and there's very little skin over the top of the bone in this region.

 This is the what was 'The hole' have a look at the May entries in the blog if you want to see why it was called 'The hole'. Again this was very tender and sore when Joe started with the massage, but bit by bit he's been working at it from around the edges working into the middle. I helped a couple of days ago and noticed that the scar tissue either side of the hole where the Reebok stitches were was quite lumpy beneath the skin and Joe allowed me to do the massage and within a matter of seconds it went from being a hard lump to almost not noticeable. Joe noticed the difference and he's started on this area as well. It would be nice if in the longer term the tissue did grow back and this hole was able to fill in properly or at least with level with the surrounding skin. At the minute he's not fussed about the scars, so we have to keep him working on them because I think in the longer term he'll probably prefer it if they were minimised as much as they could be.

Physio

The physio that he's doing at the moment is primarily about getting his thigh muscles working and getting strength in his ankle so that he can walk properly and we can see that he is getting there bit by bit. One of the drills we've been doing is to simply balance on the bad leg. Initially he couldn't do it at all in August some time, but he's been able to do it now for 174 seconds in one go. With that record being set I've adapted the exercise and introduced a bit of a cricket element to it. What we do now is that, I face him as he stands on the bad leg and I throw a ball to him and he has to catch it and throw it back whilst balancing on the bad leg. The idea is to do this as many times as possible without setting the good leg down and the record after 2 days of this is 15 throws and catches. This new version seems to be getting him to use the inside of his foot more as at the moment he primarily balances using the outside of his foot.

The paddock

Unfortunately there seems to be a couple of people that use the paddock to exercise their poxy dogs and it always seems to be Staffordhsire Bull Terrier owners. Despite the fact that I've pointed out to them that I try and maintain a wicket in there and that it's quite important to us that it's not torn up by dogs. One Woman even acknowledged that she should not have her dog in there anyway as it was a sport/play area and not designated for dogs to crap in and ruin. But despite this - she still goes in there and stands on the wicket area and throws sticks along the length of the wicket (Nowhere else) so that dog runs up and down it tearing the grass up! Despite this and probably helped by the fact that we've not been in there a lot this summer it's recovered a bit despite very little intervention on my part.

The two images above were taken a couple of weeks ago.

The images here were taken at the weekend just gone.

 

At the batting end I've put down some organic matter and hopefully this'll help to level it up a bit and promote some growth of the grass. In these images above you can see that on the right hand side where the fence posts are there's some brambles and trees growing on what's left of the fence and it casts a shadow across the grass where we bowl. Again with the light being limited there because of the bush growth the grass doesn't grow so well, so I've had to trim back the brambles and I'll probably cut back the bushes to get some light in there.

The pictures below are more recent and we've suffered a set back. A large group of youths all about 16-18 years old turned up in the paddock at the weekend and spent a couple of hours playing football in there. They know we have a wicket there in the summer and it does feel like they're being vindictive because like the dog owners they seem to focus on stomping all over the wicket area and in this incidence it's all over the area where I'd put seed down and its on Ben's bowling length. I suspect that by the time May comes I may be able to get it back into shape, but if they are to return again over the coming 6 months it may end up being too much?

This is how it should look if it wasn't for the dogs and the football. I've thought about setting up somewhere else, just outside the paddock on the road verge there's a decent bit of flat grass which is ideal for dogs and I could mow and maintain a wicket there, but it would be so much harder to put then nets up there. Or I could contact the council and ask if I can set a wicket up over at the Rec across the way from the cricket pitch, I'm sure based on what they said before and the help that they've offered me before they probably would say okay, but again it's the nets situation that is the problem.

My own fitness

I had a bowl yesterdy and today, over at the Rec in the old tennis courts and the issues that I've highlighted previously with regards to bowling with my arm and wrist twisted emerged again. It's obvious that will need to address this and do something different, so the plan to bowl Top-Spinners and Flippers looks like the way to go, because these cause no problems at all. Other things that are causing niggles are... The pads of my feet - the soft tissue area to left of the ball of my foot on the right foot seems to bruise easily at the minute. That might just need a change of footwear, but I'll have to keep an eye on that. My hip also still twinges - sciatica piriformis, so again as I ease back into training hopefully some of these things will be okay? But, I am aware that maybe this is the beginning of the end, I'll just have to wait and see.