Running around

In three months I am planning on running a half marathon.  The first half marathon since my ACL reconstruction.  In three months time.  That's 12 short weeks away.  The internal debate is do I just go out with a goal to finish it? Do I dare even think about setting a time goal?  Can I (or more directly) HOW do I use crossfit to train for this so that I'm not running too many miles on my knee?  And speaking of miles....what should the longest, long run in the training program be?

I've been running with a group on the weekends lately.  They keep me motivate, accountable, and best of all, introduce me to new running paths.

 



I found this little guy on the new route last weekend.  I think I'm in love!  I scratched his head till my hands smelled of lanolin and then was on my way.

 

 

I'm not much of a morning person but the early morning sun on these cheerful sunflowers was just what I needed to put a smile on my face.  I'm not one to run with my phone usually, but that morning my ipod battery was dead.  I was so thankful to have my camera with me so I could take these pictures.

Officially

I had my very last physical therapy appointment yesterday. 

It feels good to be closing this chapter.

I left with a pinky swear promise that I won't be jumping off any tall platforms anytime soon.

Just regular running for me, none of that fancy stuff from now on.

For Boston With Prayers

Tuesday, I pulled my never before worn tough mudder tee from the back of my drawer.

I just haven't felt like I earned it....that whole tricky business about missing the last 4 obstacles and all.

But it seemed like the right time to show my support for Boston.

The Road To There Goes Through Here

Week 7 - 115 degrees flexion and 3 miles at one time on the recumbent bike.  And a fleeting thought as the physical therapist is bending and pushing on my knee, and I'm trying and failing not to cry....being able to bend my knee is highly over-rated.

Week 8 (two months) - added 4 inch step downs, 60 lbs on leg presses and squats to chair level to the rotation.

My two perma screws and one dissolving screw

Week 9 - added single leg toe presses, bridges, and 60 lb on leg presses with the wobble board.  125 degrees flexion, I should be at 130 by now...eek.  Have to work on it.

Week 10 - 130 degrees flexion without much trouble.  Yay!  10lbs added to the leg extensions.  And the therapist's encouragement "you may feel like you aren't making very much progress but in the long run it's better to go slow and steady about regaining strength".

Week 11 - 70 lbs on the leg press, 5 minutes on the balance board.  Done with leg brace now too.  Which makes stairs a lot easier!  It was always slipping down before.

Week 12 - Walking backwards, 6 inch step downs, stairs, stairs, stairs.

Week 16 - 80 lbs on leg press, balance board with ball toss, walking backwards, crab walking with resistance band.  I have 145 degrees flexion now.  Taking the next 4 weeks off, then it will be back to therapy to re-learn how to run safely.

Can I run yet?  how about now?  now?

5 months - My right quad is stronger but still not the same as my left.  New homework assignments:

-Jumping with feet together.  It's not how far I jump that matters most but landing as softly as possible.

-90 degree squats using an exercise ball

-90 degree squats on one leg

-110 lbs on leg press

The Last Few Weeks

The boys went fishing at Pyramid and caught some tasty dinner!
Emma got to help gut the fish...she loved it.

New Year's Eve brought the tooth fairy AND....

....fireworks

I learned how to make hot tamales from one of my favorite people in the whole world

The sweet ladies at church made me a prayer shawl,
 which Emma promptly claimed as her own.

The boy turned 33.
We celebrated with a mocha bacon brownie.
Which is about as un-confetti chip cake as it gets.

6 weeks post surgery

An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.

~cloud atlas

Oh, but if only it could.

Last night I had that dream again.  Or better named, the nightmare.  The crashing down and the flash of white and the horrific pain in my knee.  It's been a while since I have relived that moment.  After waking with a start and falling back asleep I dreamed I was running a race barefoot through the grass and the girl in front of me was dressed in a tutu and my knee wasn't hurting me.  That would be a nice reality.

Yesterday marks 6 weeks since the ACL reconstruction (and meniscal repairs).  I can get to 110 degrees flexion with some effort, but I can get there.  I have been okayed to bend my knee when walking in the brace now, and sleep without it, and start moving around more.  I still need to go to PT twice a week for a while.  And I'm going to go check in with my favorite FIT instructor next week to talk rehab.

Everything I've read online says at the 4 month mark you can start jogging again.  But I ran into a girl in the hallway today who said she wishes she would have waited longer.  Funny the conversations you attract with a bulky, full leg brace as your fashion accessory.  She took one look at me and asked ACL repair?


I guess I'll take the wait and see approach.  June seems so far away and yet too close all at the same time.  I was really, really hoping that I'd be able to run in the Reno Tahoe Odyssey again in 2013.

One month review

Honestly, I thought I'd be moving around more by now. The joint and knee itself are still tender and swollen. I'm pretty mobile on my crutches, but it's tiring and I find myself needing to sit with my knee up and iced a lot.  And I catch myself pondering things like how do I know that everything is healing like it should be on the inside? And can't I take a bath yet without having to prop my leg up over the side?

The newest, random fact I learned is that the quad muscle usually keeps the knee cap in it's little groove.  And since my quad muscle is weak and not firing properly it makes my knee cap click across the joint when I bend it for cycling or hamstring curls.  At first it freaked me out.  But physical therapy Ross showed me how to push it back into place.

my dragonfly shaped staple scar

I have seen my future and it scares me a little.  At some point I will have to do the balance board.  I was terribly uncoordinated at the balance board before I had my knee injury, so this should be interesting.  And the girl in this picture, is holding the ball against the wall with her hip and squatting with her repaired leg.  She had pretty much the exact surgery I had in March.  I hope that I am still not at PT 7 months later!  And the man on the slant board, he just had his ACL repaired (no torn meniscus) two weeks ago.  So jealous! 

Two more weeks and I head back to the doctor to see about getting a little range of motion with my leg brace on.

Knee Progress - week 3



Still a little swollen - but scarring up nicely



Physical therapy - more of the same:

straight leg raises

Toe presses

hamstring curls

Hamstring stretches

Wall Slides

10 mins of recumbent bike

9 minutes of Electric stimulation standing

4 minutes of standing on the slanty wall board

It's such a process to shower/bath, but a necessary one! Standing in the shower without my brace on feels like being Linus without his blue blanket, and I am still not supposed to soak the knee so bathing is uncomfortable.  So far there has been supervision from the sister-in-law, the boy, the other sister-in-law, the girlchild and most recently my mother.  Hoping to rein in this ever growing circle of people who have been witness to my naked-ness.

Chicken leg is still looking chickeny - if I can figure out the logistics of getting a good picture it's going to happen.

I finally had time to switch out the summer/winter clothes in my closet.  I found my tough mudder technical tee thrown in the back of my running shelf.  I had forgotten I sweet talked the medic man into driving my broke-knee self to the finish line so I could get my t-shirt.  Haven't decided if I 'earned' the right to wear it yet or not...

Making progress

Took ten minutes but I did get all the way around a couple times and 0.25 mile

What physical therapy looks like right now:

10 minutes on the stationery bike

a billion straight leg raises (all directions)

toe presses

hamstring curls

hamstring stretching

heel slides

And this week "something new":

The electric stimulation with brace over the top and standing at the same time. 

Are we having fun yet?

Week two post surgery

I got my staples out yesterday, that felt weird.  They have a tool that looked suspiciously like a regular, old staple puller.  I wondered if it would bleed but thankfully it did not.  The nurse has sufficiently scared me though.  She said my knee looked really swollen still and was quite worried about the staple that sits over my knee cap.  So now I keep wondering if that's going to bust open any second now.  I've had ice on my knee close to none stop since I got home yesterday.

We are in the middle of the second, poorly time work trip for the husband.  So far it's been going alright.  I'm on my second night in a row of sleeping in my own bed instead of on the couch...that's progress.  The two biggest concerns right now is that the dog keeps getting out of the backyard and how am I going to get myself to work? 

Because of the bone contusion and cartilage damage the doctor recommended that the running miles come way down and I find a different activity to spend most of my time with.  I guess it's going to be triathlons for me.  I don't care for bike riding that much but I've done swimming before and it wouldn't be terrible to return to it.  Or maybe I'll just aim for 5 or 10Ks and not too many of them.  Not the news I wanted to hear or the way I wanted to end my running days for sure.  I guess we will see how it goes with time and rehab.

Sunday night, when I was attempting a bath while trying not to get my right leg wet (it was heavily saran wrapped....), I noticed that my calf is already very noticeably smaller than the other one.   I measured it today, a full 1.5 inches skinnier than the left one. Great, now I'm going to be a gimp with one chicken leg!

But I finally finished reading Cloud Atlas and I got an Indian shooting a star on my tootsie roll pop, so we'll call it a good day.

Knee progress v.1

I was thinking I'd keep updating this link with knee pictures.  Even if no one else is interested it'd be a nice way for me to track my progress, especially when I start to feel frustrated.  Which I know is going to happen. 

I figure updates should go to the top so no one has to see the gross, just out of surgery picture every time I add a new picture.  See how thoughtful I am??



Staples out - 11-12-12 (12 days)



Staples! After first bath 11-4-12 (4 days)

Getting the drain out - 11-01-12 (1 day)

One week post surgery

Week one by the numbers:

sister-in-law assisted baths - 2

times I whacked my head on the nephew's top bunk - 3

longest time I've gone between pain pills - 6.5 hours (that's progress!!)

band aids used to keep staples clean and dry - 30

times I've threatened Bob I'm going to spank him with my crutch - 4

Times I actually spanked Bob with my crutch - 0

times I've been to physical therapy - 3

number of ebay purchases I've made from the couch - 1 (one's still pending)

number of downton Abbey episodes I watched on netflix - 6

number of black widows that had to be dealt with - 2

number of pieces of Halloween candy stolen out of the kid's candy bags - too many to count

It's been one week since my ACL surgery.  To be honest I really thought I'd be moving around a lot more than I am by now.  The handful of trips I've made into Reno for follow ups and physical therapy leave me exhausted and ready for a nap.  I thought I'd be so bored that I'd spend all my time reading but I keep falling asleep mid page.

Still working on the whole using crutches thing.  Someone told me that if you learn to use crutches as a kid then it's like riding a bicycle and it comes right back to you.  If you're first experience with crutches is as an adult, you are basically screwed.  I think I have finally mastered the up and down of the two steps at my front door though.

The electro-shock therapy at PT...I know it's necessary but I don't like it!

The boy has been gone for the last 5 days for work, so I have floated from mother-in-law to sister-in-law's house.  There have been tasty comfort foods, warm sponge baths, and lots of naps.  Thank goodness!

Last hot breakfast before I went home to my own place

Last night I spent the night at my own house with both kids by myself for the first time since surgery.   The house is a little messy but we all survived!

I'm off to do my leg exercises.  Here's to hoping that there's a lot more progress in week 2 and a lot less of a need for prescription strength pain medicine.

Bob's encouragement

Bob as Sensei Wu:

Today you have failed.

Tomorrow we will try again.

A new friend

Scenes from day 5.

Day 2

Highlights:

Flowers delivered from the peeps at the boy's work.

Got the drain removed and the bandages changed.

The hole where the drain leaked quite a bit. 

That was gross.

I got these "hot" TED compression stockings I have to wear to prevent blood clots.  All I need now is a nurse's cap and I'll have next year's Halloween costume all set.

I took a picture of my knee before they bandaged it this morning.  But it's the kind of thing someone needs to be warned about I think.  6 stitches holes and several staples and all kinds of swelling.  Maybe later I'll have a fun before and after to compare.

Add another tally to October

Statistically speaking, October has always been a terrible month for my health.  There's been mono, and thyroid radiation, and that one year I had terrible morning sickness, a month long case bronchitis.  This year, instead of trick or treating, I got a new ACL, lost 50% of my medial meniscus, got stitches in both meniscus, and some fancy staples down my shin bone.

This year's halloween costume

The part I was most worried about (the anesthesia going out and coming back) was no big deal.  The part I was sure I would get through (the pain) was so much worse than I thought it would be.  Everyone said day two would be so much worse than day one.  But upon waking, on a scale from 1 to 10 on pain, I'd give it a 57.

Highlights:
After waking up my throat was really sore.  The nurse said that was from the tubing they put in my mouth to keep my tongue from cutting off my airway. 

Me: Can I see it?

The Nurse: Are you sure? It looks like big vagina.

Me: I'm sure.

Except I don't really remember what it looks like, I think I wasn't fully awake yet.

We emptied my drain twice in the night for a total of 90ml of blood and whatever.  Fun right?

Here's to day two, hopefully it is filled with less pain, more sleep, and getting the drain removed.

I went to the mudder

And she bested me.  But I had such a great time getting my booty kicked. 

Here are just a few pictures of the day.  I'm off to shower and scrub the gravel out of my elbows. 

That's me in red, assessing the ring situation.  I assessed poorly.
 Ended up swimming.

Halfway done.  Yay!

Some of American Savage.
It's only pipes filled with water and barbed wire above, no big deal.

Quick photo break

Still have a little more scrubbing to do on my number.  Can you tell which knee is swollen?

Even though I didn't get to finish the course (I buckled my knee on obstacle #14 at mile 8) I accomplished quite a bit and am happy.  Plus I got to ride in the medical vehicle down the mountain and have hot chocolate with the EMTs. Experiencing a little bit of the behind the scenes action of the race.  I think the EMT girl could tell I was frustrated and trying not to cry, she drew me the sweetest, sharpie heart across the tape of my knee bandage.  It's the little things in life.

Should the opportunity arise again, you can be I'll be settling the score with the Tough Mudder!