Tuesday, May 15, 2012
6 Week Post Surgical Blues!
Did a mad hike thru rockhound on saturday, and decided to try a walk jog on sunday. I walked for 5 minutes, and then started jogging for a few minutes at a time mixed with very short walks. Damn knee hurt bad, but I pushed it out for about 30 minutes. I then walked for another fifteen minutes or so. Came home and iced a good bit, but the knee hurt all night. Missed some sleep due to the throbbing. Awoke monday to a knee that wouldn't bend very far and was the size of a grapefruit. Went to the gym and spun on the exercycle for a half hour. That loosened up the knee pretty well, and then I did all the upper body exercises. Came home and stretched and iced the knee all day. Bye evening, it had settled back down to the usual degree of discomfort. Today I went to the gym and forced myself to use one of those freakin' elliptical machines. I did 30 minutes with a heart rate range from 123 to 144, so I got in a good workout. Followed that up with ten minutes of spinning to loosen up the knee, and then a few specific lower body exercises. Came home and iced things down. What was the most disturbing from the attempted jogging on sunday was the fact that the pain to the outside of the knee down into the tibia/fibula was pretty much identical to the pain I had prior to surgery. So, things are not looking/feeling very good. If I go with the guideline from that Study in Sweden, that two and a half hours a week of basic aerobic exercise is optimal, and throw in weight work to try and be able to carry the groceries for a few more years, I should be able to accomplish this relatively pain free with cycling, and the exercycle and ellipticals at the gym. I see the doc next tuesday and will go over my progress. He had suggested, and I will probably try as my last resort to be able to do some running, to look into orthotics to see if they could move some of the landing force more to the center line of my knee away from the outside. That will be pretty difficult to do, but I will try it as a last resort. Since you can't run on an artificial knee (at least not the ones they have invented thus far) and transplanted meniscus is not yet a covered procedure, I will just need to try and care for this knee until some future breakthrough occurs or they throw the dirt in my face. So Terry, get going on that bike!
Took a picture of my biggest cactus in bloom as well as those weird seed pods that the large agave produced after flowering. Forcast for the next 7 days is a sunny, dry, high 80's to low 90's. Doesn't get much nicer than that!
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