Relearning To Walk

Relearning how to walk has been one of the more interesting and challenging experiences of my life. I injured myself on July 30th and put hardly any weight on my right leg for 2+ weeks. On August 17th after my followup with the doctor, he advised that I start putting weight on the leg. (still wish I had bumped that appointment up earlier since I had a two week gap after the MRI was done and that but oh well).

I started physical therapy on August 19th and learned the initial set of exercises I needed to work on to strengthen up the rest of my leg. Some people do not need surgery as a result of this injury if they are able to walk and are not trying to play sports. For me, I've always played sports and I know I'll need the surgery to return. In the meantime I needed to work on regaining leg strength to be able to walk. Quad strength being a lot of the focus.

Before the PT appointment on Wednesday, I worked on crutch walking Monday and Tuesday. It made quite a difference. Before, I had to use all upper body to get from place A to place B. Now, I could sort of walk, albeit with the aide of the crutches and pretty slowly. But it was a start!

I was slightly nervous for the PT since I knew there would be some bending of the leg in ways it may have not been quite comfortable yet. And it did. But it wasn't so bad. I did some knee bending and some leg lifting. I was given a print out of the exercises to work on and left with the homework assignment of doing those three times a day. Not too bad. He also said I need to ice it down every night which I had not been doing.

On Thursday I asked Matt if he wanted to do a lap outside. Fresh air breaks at work has been a daily ritual for us to take a step away from our desks, breathe in the good air, and stretch our legs a bit. It had been almost three weeks since I was able to take a lap around the property and I was ready to snap that streak. One lap around the entire premise is a half mile, so it's a decent amount of distance. We did it, slowly, but it felt good. Later Thursday I went to my kickball game and the bars afterward to celebrate victory and at the end of the day my fitbit "printed" out a 3.47 mile for the day. I had gotten up to 2 miles a couple times before but this was my best day so far.

Of course with that being said, I was pretty sore for the rest of the weekend. It got tricky doing the exercises at times. A couple nights over the weekend I did wake up in the night with it not feeling so awesome. A couple It's Always Sunny episodes were quality medicine as I was able to transfer some brain energy to laugh at those idiots. That helped. I had to buy four new tires Friday morning for my car to pass inspection. That didn't help. We had a pizza party Saturday night with some friends. That helped. (Thank you again Sara for making the pizzas). And generally, I took it pretty easy over the weekend. I wasn't able to go to Magnaball (wasn't planning to), but I watched the live streams each night and that was super awesome! All three nights were fantastic. The boys are on fire.

Yesterday I went for my second PT appointment. I was able to use the stationary bike. I got full rotation on the pedals but wasn't able to pedal all that fast. That was nice. I showed him how I had been walking on crutches and told him I over did it on Thursday. He asked me to show him how I walked without crutches and I just stood there. Not quite ready for that. I'm hesitant because I don't want to fall. I'm slightly hesitant to somehow make this worse before it's repaired. I haven't tried without crutches yet so yeah I'm a bit nervous about that. He showed me a couple new exercises I can do now to work on shifting my weight from side to side (formerly my goto dance move) and extending up from my tippy toes distributing the weight evenly. I'll work on those and try to attempt some without crutches walking at some point.

To a lot of people, having PT before surgery seems a little different, but I understand why. I need to strengthen everything else up in my right leg prior to surgery so that after surgery that strength is still there while my new ACL gets ready to take over it's functions.

The doctor had said last week that I didn't need to wear the leg brace all the time so I've been keeping it off when I'm just at home.

I have another followup with the doctor next week and another PT appointment this week. Hopefully by next week the doctor likes the progress he sees. My daughter starts Kindergarten on the 8th and I do not want to miss that, but they are welcomed to open me up the following week if everything looks good to them.

Relearning to walk is one of the weirdest things I've ever done. I don't recommend you try it.