Insomnia and another late night update

I've been having a major issue over the past few months. I have not been able to sleep more than a few hours at a time. The hardest part is that during the night I am completely unable to sleep at all. I've been told that this is an effect of the traumatic brain injury I received during my fall. I didn't have any bleeds, but I did have a significant concussion with a coup counter coup injury. I hate this. The hardest part is I miss being able to stay in bed and have that comfort of having Kate next to me. My nightly routine now is to stay in bed with her, I scratch her head until she drifts off into that peaceful bliss then I relocate out to the living room. I'm tired but sleep just won't come. I don't know what else to do. I'm going to go see my doc next week, since I've spent so much time in the hospital over the past year I'm quite weary of going to any appointments, but it seems I don't have much of a choice now.

Since I'm up and writing tonight I guess I'll give you all an update on how things are going on the journey back to the ambulance. Hilbert, the new physical therapist and above knee amputee as well, has identified two major issues that are keeping me walking on the cane. First and easiest to fix is that my core/hip muscles just aren't strong enough to stabilize me as I come over the foot on the prosthetic side. This has resulted in an involuntary bending towards the unaffected side. It's annoying and luckily an easy fix. Just have to do a few exercises to strengthen the muscles and that should go away. Second, is learning to adapt my gait so that once that lean is gone I walk normal again. My goal is it to be indistinguishable when I'm in uniform that I am an amputee.

Another interesting fact I've learned today is that as an above knee amputee when doing activities that include walking or running I will use approximately 90% more energy to do the same task. As an example if Kate and I go walking when she has walked one mile, energy wise I will have walked nearly 2 miles. This will make it a bit easier for me to lose this poundage I have added over the past year of being inactive, but also shows me yet another obstacle I will face in trying to return to work. It feels sometimes that it will never get back to normal, or even feel normal again. I have good days and bad, but I feel like I'm spinning my wheels until I can get this cane out of my life and just be able to get up and go. I refuse to let this beat me, but for the first time I'm wondering if my goal of returning to the ambulance in August was a bit too ambitious. I suppose only time will tell.