January 25, 2008

“Disgusting” and Liking It

I had my 6 week post-op appointment today with my surgeon. I’ll be 6 weeks officially on Monday. He checked out my knee, grinned and told me how great I’m doing. He did that pulling test that he did on me before surgery. My leg barely budged. Before it felt like he could just pull it right off. I’m realizing that my knee is stable. It is better; I just need to give it time to heal now. My surgeon also reminded me that while the outside incision areas may be disappearing quickly, I need to remember that there was a whole lot happening on the inside and all of that trauma is going to take some serious time to heal.

My knees at almost 6 weeks post-op (I think you can tell them apart).

He officially welcomed me to the boredom stage. For the past two weeks, my body has been breaking down the graft and for the next six weeks, my body will work on building it back up. I need to be very careful during this crucial don’t-screw-it-up time period. I’ve been given instructions to start walking around the house without the brace from time to time to see how it feels, with plans to get rid of the brace within the next week or two (minus excursions outside the house where they still want me to wear it so people don’t bump into me, etc.).

I didn’t break any flexion records at PT today. I pretty much stayed where I was on Wednesday. Considering that I barely did any of my PT yesterday since I was busy dealing with a 24 hour virus, I wasn’t too disappointed. While I was on the table working on my leg lifts, another woman was laying on a table a few down from me. She still had steri-strips on her knee. I heard her tell my PT that I was "disgusting" because of how I was able to do leg lifts.

My PT said to her, "Try to think of it as: that’s the goal."

When I was done with my table exercises, I Lance Armstronged it on the bike for 15 minutes (while visualizing kata), added another 5 lbs. to the leg press machine and then spent a couple minutes walking backwards on the treadmill. I had to look straight ahead because looking down was so funny and disorienting. I started imagining myself on one of those crazy treadmill commercials where the person goes flying off and into the wall.

Walking on an incline, the goal is to use long backward strides which help with walking and extension. Thankfully, I kept it together and made it off there alive.

The college rugby player who is seven weeks ahead of me has been my goal. Now I’m somebody’s goal. It feels really nice to be a goal. Go ahead and call me "disgusting." It’s the most flattering compliment I’ve heard in a while.

***The BBM Review is giving away three boxes of customizable fruit roll-ups, just in time for Valentine’s Day. All you have to do is follow the directions and leave a comment there telling me the sweetest Valentine or message you’ve ever sent or received. You can even cheat and just leave a nice Valentine’s message for me. The sweetest three will win! Winners will be decided next week! Hurry up and enter here.