10 weeks feels a little like the upside down

If you don’t know what the “Upside Down” is, please stop reading this and go watch Stranger Things. Then come back and read this. The show is gold and should definitely be watched over reading this silly blog. 


Ok.
I’m at 10 weeks post-op, which is 2 1/2 months, which is also 70 days. 
I’m happy to be so far out and yet I still feel so far away...
from the end...
from the finish line...
wherever/whatever that is.
I’m feeling a little stuck in the upside down. Far away from being freshly surgical but far away from back to normal. Functioning well but still having trouble. 
The upside down. 

Someone asked me the other day, after asking how my bunion surgery went...wait. 
What?!  Bunion surgery??  
Sorry that’s not what I had done, but thanks for asking how it went. I think. Anyway, this person said that it looked like I was all healed. Well, yes, healed but still recovering physically with PT. So the person then asked when the rehab will be over and how will I know that I’m “good to go.”

Good question!  
Where is the end of this? What does that look like? When will that be?  Dr. Z gave a very broad 18 month timeline. I’m sure I will be essentially “normal” before that, I hope so anyways. But I guess I don’t know. And when I ask that question, he doesn’t have a real answer for me. It’s patient specific. It depends on your knee not rejecting what we did to it. Etc. 

There’s a significant percentage of patients who need scar tissue debrediment surgery around the 2 year mark after meniscus transplant. I’m hoping like hell I'm not in that percentile. I guess the bottom line is that I’m viewing this as not really having a finish line. I’m never going back to “my knee.” There’s a finite time that this will last, and then a finite time that knee replacements last. 

I’m not complaining. 
I’m really not. 
Just thinking out loud, which is what this blog is for. 

PT is going OK. I did way too much on my knee this past weekend and at my Tuesday appointment my new PT didn’t seem to care that I was having pain and still had me do my full session with even the more strenuous things. She also tends to show me how to do it properly like 15 times herself and shows how “easy” it is. Great. It’s easy for you, but my body isn’t doing it like that yet. Throw me a freakin bone!  So I cancelled today’s session and did the home based stuff that’s a bit easier on the joint. It was the right thing. The pain has subsided mostly and it feels more stable. *as an aside I also found out Tuesday through conversation with her that my new PT is more of a Trump supporter than not and I’m struggling with that knowledge a bit, however silly that may be*

In other news not related to my knee...
We are I am in the process of moving my oldest son into his new room which means moving stuff and painting and obsessively organizing like I tend to do. He’s moving from a shared room with his younger brother to the room we used as a hangout/toy room for them. So this is part why/how I did too much this weekend. I moved their video games and toys down to the finished basement and then painted the closet. 

We had the closet built a few months ago so it was all unfinished wood and drywall. So the closet is done and the walls get painted starting tomorrow!  I am trying to do this in small pieces so as not to ruin the progress I’ve made on my knee. I don’t like to go so slow, but I’m reminding myself that I am still more than a month ahead of where I thought I’d be with this project!

Yesterday I walked the farthest I’ve ever walked which is really exciting!  It wasn’t easy, and I was not in appropriate shoes for walking, but I did it and my knee seems no worse for it today. I walked 0.8 miles to my therapist, and 0.8 miles back. Not too shabby!

One last bit of news...I wrote a new blog post for The Looking Glass Foundation (an eating disorder recovery foundation) that was recently accepted. It’s about ways I’ve been able to stay the course in my eating disorder recovery despite losing one of my main outlets for coping; running. I’ll post it here once it’s been published on their site. 

Thanks for reading and caring!

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