I’m at 2 months and 9 days post surgery. I had a check up at the surgeons today, and it went very well. I’ve been getting along like gangbusters, I’ll have you know: I’m very strong, my left leg is only mildly atrophied, and they’ve got me doing standing-on-one-leg exercises. it’s wild how much I’ve progressed. Actually, I love physical therapy: it’s the one for sure thing in my life right now that I’m GOOD at. really – even though I wouldn’t have called myself an athlete, maybe that podiatrist that made me cry* was on to something. I’ve seen these high school kids who really don’t want to be there kind of floating through the exercises. I get all red-faced and sweaty doing lunges and kicking things and the stairs and weights. And I am so glad I’ve got my families weird ability to quickly gain new muscles.
Unfortunately, my insurance only covers 20 visits per calender year for PT. so even though my surgeon would prefer I was in PT for 5 months, I’ve been skimping out the visits since the beginning of the year. Luckily I was able to squeeze in 3 weeks of visits before the end of last year! Now I’m going 2x a week instead of the preferred 3 and have sworn solemnly on the dead man’s ligament that I will go to the gym at least 1x for extra exercises. My dr is suggesting now that I only go 1x a week or less so I can stretch out the visits as long as possible. He doesn’t want me to start running or jumping until March, and would like my therapist to be with me as I take those momentous steps. Dumb health insurance. I mean, I really appreciate them paying the 10s of thousands of dollars for my knee surgery, but wouldn’t it be nice if I could run?
* when I was in college, my first real (expensive) shoes gave me tendinitis on the tops of my feet. ok, maybe it was the fluevogs, maybe it was a combination of my falling arches and mild hammer toes. I went to a podiatrist and he told me I could never wear flip flops again and I burst into tears. He responded with anger, telling me it could be worse! I could have a clubfoot! He also said I should lay off the tae kwon do for a while, but then he said “but you’re not going to, are you? you athletes are all the same.” It was the first time I’d ever been referred to as an athlete, and it was really weird. Note: I retaught myself to walk along the edge of my foot and not across the falling arches, and now I wear flip flops with great derring-do.
