One Month

One month ago, I had my second surgery (ie. the big surgery in New York). My mom just pointed this out to me. It may seem strange that I had to have this pointed out to me, but it doesn't seem like a month has passed. In my mind it could just as easily be three months ago or 2 weeks ago. The two weeks that I spent in the hospital seem like a dream or nightmare depending on the point of view, but definately suspended animation, and since I have been out of the hospital each day seems to meld into the next with the highlights being when I have visitors. So, I have no real sense of time passage, every I have to think about what day it is and if i have something to do. Strange, but yet here we are one month later and 1 week into phase 2.

Physical therapy is a complex thing. You go there and have to unlearn the "no pain, no gain" philosophy as my PT never wants my exercises to hurt, only challenge. Therefore, you are assigned exercises that seem so simple yet after several days you realize you can do them better. For example, after surgery number one my first exercise was to passively wiggle my big toe back and forth, twice a day for no more than 5 minutes at a time. Crazy. My biggest limitation in my goal of walking again is that I can't tolerate my foot being dependent (or down, below my knee) for more than a minute or two. This makes the exercises that I do even more strange, but my favorite one is the "weight bearing exercise" in which I get to stand up holding on to something, and transfer as much of my weight as doesn't hurt to lefty, which is on a pillow, for two minutes. When I started I could hardly put any weight at all on lefty, but today I put was standing with my weight evenly distributed. A major step forward. A far cry from taking steps, but hey I am getting there even if the progress is slow.