Our story starts in August 2011, when I first put on a pair of Kangoo Jumps® rebound boots for a group fitness class at Chakaboom Fitness. It was love at first jump. By October I bought my own boots. In August 2012, I took the instructor workshop. Sheepishly, I will admit it took another year to finalize the details and get the instructor license, but I never stopped working toward it. In October 2013, I bought a dozen pairs of boots, got insured, and taught my first group fitness class ever. I learned so much about teaching by teaching those first few classes: what to do when the music disappears from your playlist; what to do when your own boot breaks while teaching; how to graciously accept assistance so set up, payment, fitting boots, teaching, stretching, putting boots away, and taking boots away all add up to one professional whole.
October 2013 through August 2015, I taught classes in a variety of venues, both indoor and outdoor. I have taught in an elementary school gym, a high school cafeteria, the fitness center in a government building, a tennis court, two different parking lots, and even in someone's garage. (Yes, there was a height limit on the garage jumpers, for safety reasons.) I visited other venues, but for different reasons they did not work out. My wooden deck became the main rehearsal hall for trying out new songs, and creating choreography that would keep my jumpers coming back for more.
Through this entire time, I also kept taking classes where I began, in Franconia, VA. At my busiest, I was taking class three or four times a week and teaching class three times a week. It was so much fun I was determined to keep up the pace as long as I could.
Complicating the picture, I thought I injured myself shoveling snow in February 2014, and it was slow to heal. Well, it turns out that was the first sign of osteoarthritis in my hip joint, and it slowly and progressively got worse, despite my stubborn attempts at denial. I kept right on jumping, although a little more gently, and with fewer "high off the ground" jumps because landing the high jumps felt less secure some days. You might think I regret continuing to jump, because you might think this made things deteriorate faster, but I am pretty sure the opposite is true. By continuing to jump frequently, I kept the muscles in my legs and around the hip joints strong and flexible for longer than they would have if I had stopped jumping. I came to this conclusion when I did stop jumping as often, then chose to stop entirely for a few weeks, and saw the difference it made.
In February 2016, after the second orthopedic surgeon said he couldn't suggest anything I was not already doing, I became very frustrated and determined, and designed my own "improvement" plan, based on research in books and on the Internet. (I was still in denial that I would need a total hip replacement sooner rather than later, because at that point it still did not hurt when I was jumping, only afterward; and all day at work, and anytime I did not have my boots on.) My plan consisted of 19 supplements, better food choices, alternative forms of working out, and not jumping for eight weeks. Subjectively, it seemed like things were improving the first three or four weeks on the plan. (I only lasted seven weeks without jumping, by the way, and the first day back in boots was FABULOUS, with all the endorphins I remembered; the next few times were ok, but not great.) By the end of eight weeks, the good days were about the same as before, but the bad days were worse than before, and I was asking my primary care doctor about stronger pain relief options.
Today I am writing this from a place of frustration and hope. I hope each day will be good, and I am frustrated when some are not. I am frustrated that once I agreed to the hip replacement, THEN they told me it's a six month wait for a surgery date, with a slim hope of getting an earlier date if someone else cancels their surgery. I hope to bounce in my boots a year from now, summer 2017, although I am frustrated that I can't find any information on anyone who has done that after hip replacement. (I could be the first!) I am frustrated that I can't tell from day to day whether I will be able to jump, so I can't schedule classes to teach, and I hope that the people who keep asking me when my summer classes will start will still be around to jump with me next year if things work out the way I really hope.
For the next several months, there will probably be less about Kangoo Jumps in my posts, and more about other things I think about. It will not be all about the pain and waiting (I prefer to whine about that in person). I have learned to write my plans on a dry-erase board, rather than in stone, but not making plans feels like acknowledging there is no future. I'm not there yet! Stay tuned for the upcoming Adventures of the Bionic Hip.
