6 weeks

It has now been 6 weeks since Tim's injury but it feels like 6 months. He had surgery to repair a totally ruptured achilles tendon on April 30th - a very painful and difficult undertaking with prognosis of a slow recovery. While he's now off crutches, walking, doing PT and making progress, it is still going to be a long time before he's back on the ice.

"Long time" is still undefined. It could be end of summer or it could be November before he's back on the ice. Or it could be longer, in which case we may not compete this year. It seems like a very long time to me no matter what.

Meanwhile I am trying to stay motivated and skate once in a while. Motivation includes listening to possible OD music and trying to skate to it, working on twizzles in my bad direction (Tim's good direction), and trying to work out some lessons with a coach so I can work on some international dances just for fun. But really none of this motivates me greatly.

We are both doing other things in our lives right now - traveling, working, doing things around the house and getting caught up with non-skating friends and family. It's been a change from spending 10+ hours a week with one another for a whole year and then all of a sudden not seeing each other at all - but I think it's good for both of us to reconnect with other aspects of our lives. This should help so that when we are back on the ice we are better able to balance skating with other things in life - a goal we had for the coming season even before the injury.

As we wrapped up last season we started planning for this new season, using the momentum of skating so well at nationals, and now it feels like that momentum is gone. That doesn't mean we won't get it back, and we do work well under pressure, so I am not writing off the season by any means. We want nothing more than to skate this year - with Sectionals in our home town and Nationals in Lake Placid - but we can't compromise Tim's healing to get there.