Recovering in Spain: Settling in and a good look at my tripple chin

I’ve been doing physio 5 days a week for almost 2 weeks now and it’s amazing what a difference it’s starting to make! I needed to build up slowly because the injury was left untreated for so long but they are really making me work hard now! Not only am I going more often and for longer periods of time – sometimes up to 4 hours at a time – I’m also doing more exercises, more difficult ones, more weight, more muscle groups and so on.

The goal of the gym exercises (see pictures below) is not so much to train my arm, core or legs muscles - nice side effect though - but to learn to keep my neck muscles under control while doing other stuff. I’m now actually able to control muscles in my neck that I didn’t even know I had!

The reason I need to train those neck muscles is because the accident caused some ligaments in my neck to be stretched. Without those ligaments it is much more difficult to keep my head in position. On top of that it also causes pressure on my spinal cord, which then causes all kinds of stuff like headaches, dizziness, vertigo, eye coordination problems. It’s actually amazing how much better I feel now that I pay attention to keeping my head in the right position to prevent that pressure on my spinal cord. Also quite amazing that no one figured this out back home!

With the increased training of the muscles I’m obviously experiencing a lot of muscle soreness. I’m often surprised where it hurts; it’s a new surprise every morning. Luckily with the all the extra activity, there are now also regular massages, muscle relaxation exercises, and acupuncture to release tension.

In the meantime all the regular treatment is also continuing; manipulation and loosening of my spine, jaw manipulation, nerve stretching (my least favourite, it doesn’t really hurt but feels horrible), exercises with laser pen on my head, pulling of my head in all kinds of ways, moving of skull parts. Some pictures below, all taken by Colin last week.

I’m also starting to settle into the Moraira life. Half the shops and restaurants are now closed until February / March but it’s still almost warm enough to swim in the sea, certainly nice enough to hike and bike. I bike to the clinica every day but still have to be very careful with biking because of my neck. Hiking is much better and I did a nice hike to the old watchtower that overlooks the harbour.

The apartment is now almost ready to live in. It was gross to the max when I first moved in. The gas stove was so full of gunk that no gas came out when it was turned on. The shower hose exploded after just over a week of use, I installed a new one. The so-called water cooker turns out to be a milk warmer (a regular household item here, who knew…) so does not warm water, or milk, over 80 degrees. I also bought a roll of cheapish fabric from the market and covered all sofas and chairs because they were too gross to sit on - can be recycled in my Dad’s house when I leave. Good enough for a month and a bit!