My Dad wasn’t around today, having taken off to see my brother and my newly born nephew! This meant nobody around to drive me into the city and I had to take the subway to work. Since I had an 8:30 AM call, I had to leave at 7:30 and was glad that I did as I was fortunate to get a seat on the train. While the crutches might help, this is NY City and most people don’t care and I wouldn’t take a seat from an old person who felt that I could use the seat more… Fortunately all that was required after standing for about a minute was some older person being able to make enough room for me to sit down… thankfully. These young ‘uns… incredible. The worst part about the trip was the bulky knee brace which I had to put on under my baggy zipper pants because over the pants they will slide down regularly and become an obstruction to walking.
It was pouring rain and I was glad I wore my Vikings hat and could peel off my outer layer once in the office. The security guards are incredibly nice there and all gave me a warm welcome and held the elevator doors for me. Everyone from my office was incredibly surprised to see me at work and rather shocked and amazed that I could pull it off. I had my foot up on my desk a good deal of the time to make sure the blood didn’t flow downwards into my knee. Even when I sat down regularly, I didn’t feel any pain and only some achiness and slight discomfort—incredible. I ended up getting a good deal of work done before I left for the day to go to my 2 PM physical therapy appointment. Since it was the day before Thanksgiving, there was no need to return to the office around 4 PM. Besides… I left my casi security card at home!!!
Physical Therapy Session 4: Wow… you have no idea what it’s like to trek 3 blocks and one and a half avenues in the pouring rain to physical therapy!!! Heck, I had a workout before I got there!!! This is going to be one of the most rainiest, nastiest Thanksgivings in recent memory! Today’s session was very short and Jason wanted to make sure that I didn’t become too sore before the weekend. The workout consisted of some leg raises, gravity pulls, leg hanging, bicycling (just motion back and forth to stretch the knee.) Ended up being a very long ice session and then the recap for the exercises I need to do over the long weekend by myself:
(1) Heel Pumps: Use a towel to put around the balls of your foot, lean back holding the ends and push forward with the balls of your foot to work your calf muscles.
(2) Leg Drops: On your back, a few inches from the wall, put the bad leg bent against the wall with the good foot hooked under the ankle and let the leg bend itself further by allowing gravity to pull your leg down. Push it up a little and keep stretching.
(3) Leg Hangs: On stomach on your bed, lie down with knees off the bed and leg gravity straighten out your hanging legs so you have a full extension.
(4) Book Hang: Sitting down on floor, straighten left leg and put heel on a book. Leg gravity straighten leg so you have full extension (can sometimes feel a little painful like a hyperextension so be careful although this isn’t a hyperextension just sensitivity.)
(5) Leg Raises: Lie back on floor and right leg bent, try to keep left leg perfectly straight and slowly raise leg until same height as knee and slowly lower leg.
(6) Push Down: Sit down on floor, put towel under knee and try to mash the towel down with your knee by flexing your quads.
(7) CPM Machine: Get in there and let it do its thing several hours a day (4-6) increasing the angle—I’m already at 110 degrees!!!
(8) Ice, ice baby! Do this around 20-30 minutes at a time.
I did a very good job at physical therapy—to repeat the theme yet again, I am noticeably stronger every day!!! While I felt I could walk, Jason at Athalon told me that he didn’t want me walking just yet and instructed me to use my crutches. He said he’d like to have me on the bike by Friday (week after surgery) and actually biking but the Holiday will break up that plan. Still, he said I was well ahead of the average pace and it is rather incredible that my swelling is down quite a bit, that I have no pain and that my strength and stretch is excellent given the timing!
After PT I ended up going to my old apartment to finish up some work on a project and collect a couple of things before I headed back to Queens. Started to trek back after getting a milkshake at around 8PM. I took a bus downtown and was able to get a seat on the express train home and listened to that new U2 song called “Vertigo” which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the aggregate (perhaps it’s about the war in Iraq), especially since the starting countoff mangles the Spanish language…
Got home and really felt exhausted. This was a heck of a long day and I was proud of myself for getting out and going to work and being resilient. I thought I could stay up for a bit but ended up passing out very quickly around 11 PM.
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