Day 6

Baby steps. That’s what I’m back to in a very literal sense. Yesterday I took my first unaided post-op steps. About forty in total, in three separate events. At one point I just got up off the air-bed and forgot my crutches. I took a step toward the kitchen and realized “Hey, I’m walkin’ here” (sans New York accent). It was definitely painful but rather than any sharp pains there was just an overall pressure that actually seemed to counterbalance the strain caused by standing upright in the first place. So I took a few more steps, very slow, very calculated, and very ready to bail over if I felt anything bad. A dozen or so steps later and I was back to the family room. No crutches needed.

It occurred to me later that if you spent a week elevating, icing, and avoiding putting any pressure on even a completely healthy leg, those first few steps would be damn uncomfortable. With that in mind, I wonder which aspects of my current discomfort are due to a complete lack of use and which are from the injury and surgery. Regardless, the knee actually feels better when I put weight on it now. For sake of accurate record, ok, the term "walking" may be just a bit on the exaggerative side. Let’s call it “maintaining balance while awkwardly moving forward”. In any case, at this point it's as close to walking as I’ve been since last Tuesday morning and it does feel unreasonably satisfying.

Unfortunately, with the primal joy of my recent walking accomplishment still fresh in my consciousness, I was reminded of my most fundamental limitation. As if some bitter, buzz killing part of the universe felt the need to provide some balance to my newly developed sense of optimism and achievement, my 7-year old ran toward me in the family room hysterically screaming that her 3-year old sister had just hit her head “real bad”. With my wife just out of reach in the front yard I started heading toward the bedrooms and the sound of the crying when I realized that had left the starting line with no brace and without my crutches. Do I take the six steps back to the crutches or just push for sixteen more in the direction of the 3-year old? I slammed my teeth together as I chose the latter without ever really considering going back. “HURRY!”, my 7-year old pleaded, urging me down the hallway as she realized how long it was taking me to travel the last 25 feet. I was already going as fast as I could and it was clearly not fast enough for either of us. A wave of helplessness had turned to anger for my condition by the time I made the last few steps into the bedroom. She had fallen while standing on the bed and had hit a bookshelf on the way down. Her body was still lying where it landed. She is unusually prone to this type of random accident but thankfully she is also somehow nearly immune from real injury. Within a few minutes the tears finally ran dry and she was fine.

Helpless, inadequate, incapable... Just a few of the things as a parent that I absolutely cannot tolerate feeling. Another good time to remind myself that the current situation is temporary and improving every day.


Today I had my first local physical therapy appointment. It was nice to be back but the session was terrible. After all of the walking yesterday I woke up with some renewed levels of pain and pressure in the knee and down the shin – which has now begun to display dull shades of purple and yellow. I took a single dose of Toradol with breakfast but then I got caught up in work related issues as the day wore on (working from my air-bed) and I forgot to take the afternoon dose. I didn’t ice during the day and I never had a chance to get my leg elevated. All noteworthy mistakes. Everything I did at the PT session was more painful and thoroughly distressing than it should have been. Range of motion was back down to 10-60 degrees. Just a day and a half prior I was achieving 0-85. I’m not sure what the unit of measure is (µA I suppose), but for the electrical current testing my left quad sets showed a 126 average, the average on my right side was just less than 5. By the time I got home I had concluded that the session was my worst to date, and that quite possibly I should have gotten a ride to the appointment rather than driven myself.

Next PT session is Wednesday. Two days to ice and elevate and prepare.

Next time will be better.