Lessons in Patience

I’m in Sherling Lake Campground. I will be here 3 – 4 weeks. Spring is coming through the area and the weather is wonderful! Since I’m headed home, and going very slowly, it occurs to me I will be extending my experience of Spring for quite a while. I think that is a good thing.
After I got to Dauphin Island (DI), I began having intermittent right heel pain. My Achilles tendon was pulling on my heel but I couldn’t understand why. It would stretch out as I walked a little so I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it. Just before I left DI, I was starting to walk a bit over a mile. I enjoyed it and it was pretty easy. Every once in a while, I would experience heel pain but it would work itself out from moving around and from letting it rest overnight.
When I arrived at Sherling Lake Campground, I began walking more. This is a great place for walking though it has some ups and downs. I walked a short distance and didn’t push myself. I played with hills and found I improved in my endurance quickly. So, I decided to walk a good distance with some hills and valleys. I measured it with a distance checker on my phone and it was 1.25 miles; no more than my longest distance on DI and I felt good. Yea!
When evening came, I got up to go to bed and couldn’t walk. My heel hurt! I was shocked and couldn’t figure out what I’d done. I hobbled to bed. Thank goodness a RV has a lot of support built in for moving through it.
The next morning, my heel wasn’t any better. I was baffled. I sat trying to figure out what I could have possibly done for my heel to hurt this badly. Finally, it dawned on me that the walk, while not greater in distance than DI’s walks, was definitely more challenging because of the hills/valleys. I had finally determined my Achilles tendon had shortened in my years of favored walking due to a right knee injury years earlier. Now that I was walking more normally, my tendon was being stretched and stressed. So, I did what all the exercise people tell one to do and I stretched my tendon using a step and lowering my heels to create the stretch. On one of the lowers, I felt and heard a tear. Whoops! Okay, bad idea.
Now, I have been resting my heel for over a week. While I can now walk on it, it still hurts and is healing very slowly. Any walking is countered by my heel “talking” to me. This tells me if I’ve done too much. I’m being decent though patience is still not my strong suite. Sadly, I realize my time here will pass before my heel allows me to walk well. I simply hope it  heals by the time I am home (almost 2 months from now) so I don’t have to go to the doctor to find out why it isn’t healing.
The lesson? Listen to my body. I know this lesson. Obviously, I have not learned it well enough.
How good are you at listening to you body? Or do you prefer your body listen to you? No judgment here because I, obviously, need to have more patience with my body than I do.