Post Surgery Week 3: Gold Star PT

Monday, June 10

Yesterday turned out to be a tough day.  I’m not sure if it was the cold weather, or the fact that perhaps staying an hour at Keith’s Coffee House for the wonderful music was too much, or if I just tried to wean myself off the Tramadol too quickly.  In any case, I felt pretty lousy most of the day, and resigned myself to the sofa with leg attached to the ice machine while binge watching multiple series on TV.

Somehow, though, the night - that I was dreading - was better.  Just a couple of Sleep Intervals.  I was already out of bed and back downstairs on the couch before midnight, but then I slept hard until 3 a.m.  Another round of icing to be safe, along with more pain meds, and I was back in bed at 3:30 and slept soundly until 8.  That’s a lousy way to get a partial night’s sleep, but it’s the best I’ve had in weeks, so I’ll take it.

But never mind all that;  today was a Gold Star day at PT.  Lindsey (no longer to be called Gestapo Lindsey after today!) put me on a stationary bike and let me pedal for five or six minutes.  Heaven!  I wasn’t sure I could make a full rotation (remember, just a week ago, I could barely get 2/3rds of the way around), but today it was pretty much easy-peasy.  I’m cleared to do 5-10 minutes of spinning a day at home now.  Yippee!

The six week goals for range of motion were set early on by Dr. Miner and team:  they want extension of zero degrees and flexion of 120 degrees.  Today, I was at (drum roll, please!) three degrees of extension and my flexion was at 125 degrees.  Hallelujah!  There’s still work to be done, but it feels wonderful to know that all this effort I put into the PT exercises at home (three times a day, every day, for thirty minutes each session, and plenty of pain in the mix) is paying off.

Still, it’s amazing how just a simple outing to go to PT can wipe me out.  Really, it’s a five minute drive from home, a couple minutes walk into the building, thirty minutes with Lindsey, and home again a few minutes later.  Just that little bit of activity has me on my back on the couch with ice on my knee, ready to go back to binge watching the British Baking Show.  I realized far, far too late that I blew the timing of my surgery:  five or six weeks later, and I could be watching the Tour de France every day!