Wednesday, July 17, 2019
What a night that was. Miserable as they come. I feel like I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but, holy hell, this is getting old. Lately it seems that I’m on a roller coaster when it comes to pain and sleep. One night (like Monday night), I’ll only wake up a couple of times, and then a quick walk and maybe some CBD lotion will dull the pain enough that I can get back to sleep. The next night (like last night), the pain is just this side of unbearable. I sleep very little, and wake up often, and it takes everything I can think of to dull the pain (walking, stretching, bending, CBD lotion slathered on, fresh ice packs, more Tylenol) just enough so that I don’t scream. Or cry.
I know that yesterday I vowed to adopt a new attitude, but, well, nights like last night sure make that a bugger of a challenge.
Last night, the pain was so bad that I thought seriously about going back to the narcotics that I kicked a few weeks ago. The only thing that stopped me from going down that path was the fact that I had an early appointment this morning with a new physical therapist, and I needed to drive there, and I really didn’t think it would be a good idea to drive if I had just taken a Tramadol a few hours earlier.
Actually, the physical therapist was not really new. Karen, at Blue Sky Physical Therapy, was my first choice for a PT when I was working on my post-surgery PT plan. I have known Karen for at least ten years; she (and a couple of her partners at Blue Sky) has been my go-to PT whenever I’ve had injuries in the past; she’s also my Pilates teacher; and as a result she knows my body and my physical quirks and bad habits exceedingly well. So it was only natural that I would schedule my post-op PT with Karen. But it turns out that Blue Sky is not in-network for my insurance plan, and that meant - with months of PT to be worked through - the out of pocket was just going to be too rich for my budget. That’s how I ended up with the hospital PT practice and Lindsey: all one easy package, especially from a financial standpoint. And - to be completely transparent - the hospital is a four minute drive from our house, and Blue Sky is close to half an hour. It was just that much more convenient.
When I saw Dr. Miner last week, he told me I could go back to Pilates classes. Yay! I was thrilled that he okayed the activity, but I was also very nervous about getting back to the classes. I’m in pretty crappy shape after laying around on the couch for weeks on end, and, plus, I wanted to make sure that Karen agreed that I could join the classes again. So we talked late last week, and set up some appointments so she could assess where I am, and what it would take to get me to a point where I could do Pilates again.
That’s why I needed to drive to an early morning PT appointment at Blue Sky today. Yes - did you notice? I drove! Now, that’s a milestone to celebrate! This was my first outing behind the wheel since pre-surgery. I did borrow Ed’s Prius, since we were both worried about my ability to operate the clutch in my own car. It felt, well, really, really weird to be going to an appointment without Ed. He’s been with me, quite literally, every step of the way in this recovery process. The comforting thought was that I already knew Karen and the other folks at Blue Sky, and in a sense, I felt like I was going home.
Karen spent a full hour with me, doing a full PT intake. As we walked from the front desk to the treatment room, she took one look at my gait and said, “we need to do some work on extension, don’t we?” When she measured it a few minutes later, it turned out she was completely right: it was at a lousy 7 degrees this morning (ultimate goal is to be at zero). Karen explained that extension is really important in being able to walk normally; without full extension, I would be continuing to put bad pressure on the IT Band and the new knee. I had already filled her in on details of my post-surgery experience, and the IT Band tendinitis. She did some basic evaluation, and noticed immediately that my quad wasn’t firing the way it should. What had seemed like a big mystery to my now-truly-former PT was incredibly apparent to my new-and-forever PT: my soft tissue got pissed off because my quad wasn’t doing its fair share of the work, and as a result, the IT Band was working overtime, and getting stretched in a way that it’s not supposed to be stretched.
Karen worked on helping me get the quad muscles to fire, and she manually worked on the tissue there, and she gave me a few new exercises to do. She talked about using e-stim if my quad doesn’t respond to these efforts to get it to do its job.
Then she spent a bunch of time working on teaching me how to walk again. Really. We walked up and down the PT office, over and over and over again. Since I quit walking with any help (cane, crutches, walker), I’ve felt that walking feels just plain weird. I’m always working hard to not limp. Karen demonstrated to me what that looks like, and, well, yeah. That sure looked weird, and it’s what I’ve been doing for weeks now.
When I saw my chiropractor (another Karin, just spelled differently) a few weeks ago for laser treatments, she asked, “is your PT teaching you to walk again?”, and when I said no, she seemed aghast. “I don’t understand how you can not go through true gait coaching when your leg has been changed so much.”
Well, it turns out that Karen and Karin both agree. I need to relearn how to walk. And I have hope now that Karen will help me get it right.
And so, just like that, after a totally lousy night, and after waking up feeling extremely despondent, and after fearing that I’d never get past this roller coaster: there’s hope. There’s a glimmer of something. There’s a bit of Blue Sky.
Blue skies smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies do i see
Blue birds singing a song
Nothing but blue skies from now on
Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things going so right
Blue days, all of them gone
Nothing but blue skies from now on
Blue skies smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies do i see
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