Friday, July 26
Among our guilty pleasures is binge watching shows on Netflix and Hulu and PBS, and well, anywhere we have a subscription, something that we’ve indulged in a big way during this recovery period. A while back, we finished watching all ten seasons of “Friends”; neither of us had watched it when it ran in prime time on network TV. Both of us were snobs when we started watching it (what the heck is all the fuss about, already?), but as we got further and further along in the timeline, we fell in love with the characters, and it was devastating to reach the end.
We searched around a bit for a replacement, and finally settled on M*A*S*H. Both of us had watched this show when it originally aired (1972-1983), but that’s a long, long time ago, and we’ve both been loving seeing it again now. It packs in the laughs, but it’s much more serious, and packs a much more emotional punch, too. The other night, we watched the final episode of Season 3. The episode is titled, “Abyssinia, Henry”, and in the episode, Colonel Henry Blake gets his discharge papers, and leaves the 4077th. (Wikipedia tells me that “Abyssinia” was slang for “I’ll be seeing you”.) The gut-punch (spoiler alert if you haven’t seen it) is that in the closing moments of the show, we learn that Colonel Blake’s plane home was shot down, and there were no survivors.
I don’t much care for goodbyes, real or fictional. I know that this is a fictional character from a TV show from nearly fifty years ago, about a war that took place twenty years before that. But still. Still, that ending was not something I remembered from my teenage years of watching this with my family, and the permanency of that loss has haunted me for the last couple of days.
In my real life, when I haven’t been thinking about the loss of Colonel Blake, I’ve been marveling at how far it seems I’ve come in this last week. I’ve engaged with Karen at Blue Sky, and my recovery has amped up. I’m doing PT with her, and a tiny bit of Pilates, and the outlook is all good. The anti-inflammatory is working its magic - I manage to stave off the worst of my recovery pain with just one dose a day, with the occasional second dose if things start to feel too painful. (I’m terrified of letting the inflammation flare up again.) The TENS unit is providing me with a tingly knee several times a day. I’ve been walking more - Ed says that our walk the other evening was a mile in length - and cycling more, too (up to 17 minutes of spinning on the trainer, soon to be 18 and more).
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| 136 degrees of flexion! |
It feels like I’ve finally turned that proverbial corner. That doesn’t mean I’m not scared to death that I’ll hit a dead-end or a U-turn at any moment, but I’m enjoying this for what it is. Progress. Moments of not thinking about my knee. The hint of actually being able to get my life back again.
And so as part of that “getting my life back again campaign", this morning seemed the right time to call my PT with Lindsey complete. We agreed that the best approach would be to let Lindsey know at the start of the appointment this morning that this would be my last visit. Ed has been with me every step of the way in this recovery, and always a part of my PT appointments, so the two of us approached this goodbye together.
Her reaction was super: agreement, congrats, a review of the exercises she advises I continue to do for the - gulp - next year. One last check of my range of motion was in order, and the results were good for high-fives all around. My extension today - after much work this week - was all the way down to 2 degrees. And my flexion? A whopping 136 degrees. Lindsey made my day by telling me this is a record for her: she’s never seen anyone with a TKR get that much flexion post-surgery. Now, how or why that matters is another question altogether, but, well, when you have a competitive nature, that’s just the way it works
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| Flanked by my PT team of Ed and Lindsey |
And so it turns out that, after nine weeks and twenty visits, my honorable discharge papers are in hand, and I’m leaving the M*A*S*H unit that is the Centura Therapy Center, and going home. Home in this case is Blue Sky Pilates and PT, where Karen tells me I’ll be able to join my old Pilates class in a couple of weeks, after just a little more one on one work with her. Home is also hanging out here at home with Coach Ed; he promised Lindsey that he’ll make sure that I pay attention to my PT and my walking and my stance, always keeping my knee over my second toe, like I’ve been taught.
And it means I had to say Abyssinia, Lindsey. It’s been good! I got hugely frustrated with you during my setback, but you always had my best interests at heart. Thanks for the memories. And the pain. And the care. And the cheerleading. And - while I’d love to stay and chat - I have places to go and people to see, and I hope won’t be coming back this way again any time soon.
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