Six weeks after having surgery on my wrist I’ve finally been released from “stall rest” and thoroughly enjoyed a four-mile hack through the fall foliage.

Zelda was content to meander along the trails and the weather was perfect. Thankfully, we are having unseasonably warm weather right now in New England and I’m planning to take full advantage of it.

I’ve read about folks who claim to have been riding a week after they had plates installed in their wrists, and while I thought I might push the envelope a bit and ride earlier, two things stopped me: 1) wondering how I would explain to my surgeon any damage that I might do if something went wrong and 2) trying to figure out how to mount a squirming horse (who decided that work was no longer on her agenda) without torquing my wrist. The vast majority of the time my wrist doesn’t hurt. I’m doing a lot of physical therapy and my range of motion is returning, but there are still times when I forget the injury and do something that is quite painful.

It’s unbelievably frustrating to feel paralyzed with indecision while doing something that you normally don’t think twice about. Like mounting a horse. My mind started to anticipate what could go wrong. Zelda might move away, leaving me with too much weight on my left wrist. Which might cause me to fall. Seriously, I need to get a grip! I think that hurting myself doing such a normal activity (walking in the rain) has left me with an overactive imagination and the need to breakdown all physical activities into individual actions that can be evaluated in terms of possible issues.

So, I waited until I had a friend at the barn who could hold Zelda, walked her up to the mounting rocks (the barn has three rocks in a row that get progressively higher) and stepped on. As I’d anticipated, once I was on top of Zelda, my anxiety disappeared. Riding felt terrific and I intend to get as much saddle time as possible before winter weather sets in.