My 2021 did not end on a high note.

The evening before Xmas Eve, I went bouldering with friends in a gym. I was working on my first yellow boulder problem half way through, when a thought crossed my mind ‘I have not been on the wall for almost a month, do I remember how to fall properly?’. I pushed that thought aside and continued with a couple of moves when I suddenly lost my footing. Rather than lay back to fall on the pad, I vertically slipped off the wall from 6 feet high and landed on my right foot first. I immediately felt some pain and saw my ankle bone dislocated. Sitting up on the pad, I gently touched my ankle bone out of curiosity and it slid back to its place. My friends came to my side and took me to urgent care right away. At urgent care, my ankle swelled up much more and I felt more pain. I got an Xray and the doctor said no fracture and sent me home with an aircast to wear for two weeks.

The following two weeks were the hardest during recovery as it was challenging to go up stairs and moved around the house in general. Fortunately, I had friends who dropped off groceries, picked up prescription, and visited me to have meals with me over the holidays. It happened to be on the snowiest days in the Seattle area. As I looked out the windows, I could see kids playing in the park and how I wished I could go outside for snowshoeing.

Once I was in good enough shape to walk around using my injured foot as well (rather than skipping in my left leg) and the swelling greatly reduced, I started going to PT. I could not do a proper squat because it was really tight around my ankle. It was not easy to accept the new reality that I will not be able to run or hike for a while until I get my full range of motion back in my right ankle. Since I was so active pre-injury, I felt a big part of my identity was lost. I was at a loss about how to fill up my spare time, now that I am not running, hiking, or bouldering. My PT recommended getting a bike to stay fit and use the pedaling motion to increase the blood flow around the ankle to help reduce swelling. Seeing one success story of a local trail runner who had ankle surgery and picked up biking to actively recover, I immediately invested in a road bike.

Boy, I was hooked! The high school commuter Sijie was back! I was once given the compliment that I was unfazed by busy traffic on highway 202 and I credited that to all the years of whizzing through bikes rushing to classes in high school in China. I felt nostalgic just thinking about those days and how the skills developed then became helpful now. I was steadily building on mileage each week, exploring Lake Sammamish loop, Sammamish River Trail to Burke Gilman Trail, and eventually linking them together to do Lake Washington Northern Loop. I not only loved exploring the neighborhood on a bike, which is more efficient than running and still provides me great views of the mountains, but also cherished the company I had. I caught up with friends from running club while biking, visited friends in Seattle, and biked to restaurants and ice cream shops. With my cycling friends, we dreamt up plans to bike on sunrise road in Mt Rainier National Park, to see Washington Pass from Highway 20 before the road opens for cars, and to take a ferry to all the islands and Olympic peninsula. I was feeling hopeful and excited for the summer – biking brought me so much already – I stayed fit, hang out with friends in a different setting, reconnected with a college classmate who was also into biking, and met a coworker who I would never connect with if not for biking! I would be just as happy if I will not be able to run or hike much this summer, because I found a new love!

Even though my range of motion is improving, I found it odd that my ankle is still a bit swollen after almost three months. I decided to see a podiatrist and get another X-ray. It was then that I was told that I had a fracture which was not detected in the first one and that I needed to cut back my physical activities significantly – cannot swim or bike much until the checkup in two weeks. At first I panicked again – just wondering what I should do to fill up my time again… Good thing is that my recovery from being at a loss at what I should do with my spare time is much faster this time – I can spend more time reading (since my physical activities were eating into my reading time), I can bake and cook more, I can decorate my new place with paintings and photos, I have time to update my blog, I can learn to be more financially smart, I can host dinner parties with friends and catch up, I can help my friends with their garden projects, etc… Since the initial doctor visit, I did more meal prep than before, baked a matcha cheesecake, got a group together for escape room, and repotted my some of my houseplants before they go through the growth spurts in summer. Fingers crossed that I can heal quickly!