Much Ado About Nothing?: August 2008

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

It’s Not Even Close to Over

Now that I’m finally walking almost normally and have been given the okay to go to the gym and start using some of the equipment, the real work begins. Enough of those elementary heel slides, leg raises, quad contractions, etc. Now I get to move on to squats, lunges, leg extensions, hip curls, leg presses and more. My knee needs to be better than it was before the injury to prevent injury to the other knee and to prevent arthritis and degeneration down the road.

Before the injury, I exercised almost every day averaging between 30 minutes to 1 hour. After the injury, I did the rehab every day and after surgery I did exercises 3 times a day. The problem is while these rehab exercises have been and will be difficult and tedious; they do not contribute to any type of weight loss regime. So, in addition to doing the rehab exercises, I’ll also need to do some type of aerobic exercise to maintain my weight – not to mention the few pounds I’ve added during rehab. Up until now, that has been months and months on the stationery bike after my rehab exercises. Slowly, I will move to the elliptical, treadmill and finally running and biking. But in the good old days, I would alternate between running/yoga/bike days with gym days. Now I will need to add the more time consuming rehab exercises to my running/yoga/bike days.

This bit of news, combined with the news that as women age, they need to exercise more and bump up their exercise routine (NBC 4 Report), I am wondering whether I want to devote all that time to this and whether I will have any time or energy to do other things (like going out to dinner or a cultural/art event, meeting up with friends and so on) after I undertake my rehab/maintaining weight daily regimen. I need a bag of chips and chocolate.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Good News from the Doc

My 3-month post surgery follow up was today and Dr. K. gave me some encouraging news. He said the knee looks good and that I can stop going to PT in September and start using the equipment at the gym as well as the elliptical/stair master and treadmill. I’ll still need to do rehab daily but I can finally start to bid farewell to the stationary bike that greets me each day when I walk in the door as it sits in my hallway as there is no other place to put it. Soon, it will be on the curbside awaiting its new owner or bulk trash.

I’ll start to go back to the gym next week and start off on the stairmaster and maybe a little on the treadmill. I’ll then do some leg extensions, use the leg press and the other piece of equipment where you lie on your stomach, put the weights on top of your calves and lift. And, I’ll finally get back to working my upper body other than using “heavy hands” at home. The last time I did all of this was May 22 – right before surgery.

He also said I can take my mountain bike for a spin when I go to PA next month. That ride is going to feel so good. And…he said he’ll probably (I want to run on the beach September 26 when I go) give me to go ahead next time he sees me (9/24) to do just about anything – including skiing. I said no to that activity and he said you got to still live your life. He mentioned something about an 8% chance of tearing the ACL in the left knee. That percentage is not worth the risk to me. I just don’t ever want to go through this again.