3 week anniversary

Hours of sleep: 6

I had the weirdest bout of pain at 2:30am, I couldn't stop moving to get comfortable.  I massaged the knee because it was super stiff.  Decided to take a pain med and fill up my ice pack.  I was able to fall asleep, but the moments leading into that were not fun as I tossed and turned struggling to get comfy.  I found a new device to position the knee- the panda neck pillow.  If you think about it, it's like a boppy for the knee.

It keeps lefty in place and elevated at the perfect height with the right amount of softness.  It also puts some pressure on the scar tissue nub.  Before going to PT, I finished knitting some hats, added flowers to them to make 'em super cute!

PT was pretty much the same today.  I started off by warming up on the bike for 5minutes.  Kim massaged my knee and noticed that my scabs were gone, so she massaged the scars with cocoa butter.  It felt so nice!  I remember at the end of the day yesterday, my scars were elevated, probably from all the exertion.  She said it will help to do a scar massage every once in a while.  Seriously, lefty is a breastfeeding baby that I just took home, soooo needy!  Now it needs its scars to be massaged?  I can't wait til the long vertical incision fully closes, then I can bath/shower comfortably.  It's like when we tell parents not to tub bathe their infant until the umbilical stump falls off.  My last incision closing will be like the stump falling off.  After the scar massage she had me go on my tummy to do the heel pulls with the strap.  Again, not my favorite part of the session.  I always have to breath lamaze style when she manually bends it.  Hee hee hooooo, hee hee hooooo.  weeeee will, weeeee will, rock you.  just kidding.  The good news is that I'm 2.5in away from touching my butt with my heel!  Hopefully I will be able to cut down to 2 sessions a week by next week, the costs of PT add up!  We did the normal planks (3 sets of 30sec holds), then added in side planks.  Those hurt like a mother!  I started slow by doing them with my knees bent.  I felt strain along the outside of my left thigh when I held the planks on both sides.  Not my favorite exercise.  From table work, we proceeded to the total gym where she inclined the sliding platform even higher, 3 sets of 12 squats.  Did 2 lines of side steps, and 2 lines of stool scoots.  I was going all over the place with the stool scoots and kept saying "watch out!"  Kim answered back cheesily with, "do you need a license?"  tap tap...  anyhoo, went over to the ballet bar and did my balance board exercises, and then balanced on a big foam pad on my left leg only for 2 min.  Did the step up step down exercises, then ended by foam rolling the knee mass out.  She said I could just do the treadmill on my own since there was some PT traffic going on (6 clients at once!)

I went to my gym for the first time in a while and was greeted graciously by all the trainers!  Cole, the manager (who tore all 3 of his knee ligaments a couple of years ago) was really impressed that I was walking around looking decent!  I chatted with him for a while, then with Malik and Freddie (2 other trainers).  Cole told me to be careful because he said that 7 weeks after his surgery, he went to move a medicine ball with his surgical leg and when he pushed it behind him with his foot, he pulled his hamstring which set him back a little.  Malik was like, "little butterfly, what happened?"  But i totally told him I needed surgery the last time I saw him, so I just repeated the story.  You should've seen his face though, he looked so concerned.  Freddie was training a girl at the time, but took a break to talk.  He mentioned that the girl he was training had torn her ACL 2 years ago playing rugby.  I looked over at her and homegirl was running like, 8.0 on the treadmill!  It was inspirational to see her and her evenly sized legs.  After her session she came up to me and we chatted for a while.  She said that 7 months after her surgery she started to feel crunching in her knee, ended up having that scoped bc it was her meniscus! I really hope that doesn't happen to me, 3 surgeries on the same knee is a bit much.  We ended the conversation with her suggestions on cold therapy.  She was hyping up moji ice packs.  Her description sounded awesome, so when I got home I did some googling.  That thing's expensive!

$150 for that?  it better come with the matching outfit!

I'll just stick to my cute cold therapy cooler.  Anyhoo, I did the speedbag for 15minutes, was able to get my aggression out through that.  My goal is to speedbag like Tony Danza and to hold an L stand on the rings like Danny Pintauro.

gymnastics sitcom superstar

During this whole recovery phase, there have been times where I feel bipolar.  Like, I'm so proud of myself for my progress based on what others say, but there are times when I feel so depressed and helpless because of the lack of mobility compared to what I used to be able to do.  What's next in my life?  What if this doesn't heal properly?  Oh no, I'm turning into Charlie Sheen or Natalie Portman in Black Swan.  I'm not bipolar, I'm bi-winning.  I'm just blessed to have people in my life to come visit and offer to take me out.  I just wish the person I love could be here by my side too.  There will be times that I'm laying here and will just start to cry for no reason.  Which leads to a big sinus headache, leading to puffy eyes, leading to really cool looking eyelids the next morning.  I'd like to blame the tears on pain, but even when I'm in pain I don't want to take the meds.  And when I do I don't have an appetite, then I start to feel weak.  It's like a vicious cycle.   I think doing nothing besides rehabbing the knee gives me too much time to think and overthink and then worry about every little thing in my life.  Yeah, I have the okay to drive, but I don't have the desire to shop because I'm scared about spending money when I'm not working.  I think all these worries are what's causing the high blood pressure.  Watching this korean drama is a great distraction.  So is tetris.  I broke 200,000 today!  I should check my BP after a couple of episodes of watching Boys Before Flowers or after a couple rounds of tetris.  Okay I need to stop being a debbie downer, I'm done venting!  deep breath...

Booked my 1 week vacay to Vince for end of April.  Is it bad that I want to start packing now?  I'm already counting down the days: 55.  I'll be there the weekend of Prince William and Kate's wedding, then it's his friends' wedding the next day.  I talked to him a couple times today, he has a weird schedule this week where he's working both day and night, but in tapas form (a couple hours at a time).  He's stressed out too, sucks that the times we need each other the most, we can't be together.  That's why I was all smiles while I booked my ticket.  The other hilites of my day were the cards I received in the mail.  One from Lisa, fellow GGWilder, and one from my Auntie Norma from NJ.  I have them sitting at my bedside for inspiration :o) I heart snail mail!

inside of left card says "So you don't have to take care of anything but yourself!"

To celebrate the 3 week anniversary, I did a three a day!  Not only did I bike at the gym (30 min) after PT (where I biked 5 minutes) today, but I did the seated bike during modern family tonight (20 min).  My knee loves the bike.  walking not so much.  I still feel tingling when I try to walk with no limp.  I was told that this feeling is normal.  Even when I assess my long incision, when I palpate around it it's pretty numb, then feels tingly more on the outskirts of it.  Right now I'm watching a special on the MTV series "I used to be fat."  Getting real thrown off because one of the girls' name is Kirsten too.  I keep thinking Suchin Pak (the host of the special) is talking to me.  I think Suchin's Korean.  What a perfect segue (not to be confused with segway like segway tour, which i really want to go on and should've gotten the groupon for)!  Gonna end the night with some Korean drama.  Steven's been checking up on my status because he's the one that suggested Boys Before Flowers.  We came to the conclusion that Koreans are really into furry fashion, perms, and they have lots of nosebleeds.

3weeks post op!