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.

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.

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Hooray for Hollywood - Well Actually California

California, which is way ahead of other states on social and environmental movements, will have a referendum this November on animal rights in California. Proposition 2 would ban factory farms from raising chickens, calves or hogs in small pens or cages. Finally! While I do not think people should give up eating meat (they never will), the way animals are raised and slaughtered for consumption is atrocious and extremely inhumane. Witness the recent investigations by the Humane Society of the United States and others that have documented that "downed" cattle, those too sick or disabled to stand or walk, are routinely beaten, dragged with chains, shocked with electric prods, and pushed by forklifts in efforts to move them at slaughter facilities. California is taking a step to make the “food from the farm to the table” process more humane.

In his column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof says this is a major gain for the animal rights movement and is part of a broader trend, which is about time and I more than welcome. While he does eat meat, as do I (but not the pig and I try to buy only free range chicken and beef), like me, he draws the line at animals being raised in cruel conditions. He goes on to say “The law punishes teenage boys who tie up and abuse a stray cat. So why allow industrialists to run factory farms that keep pigs almost all their lives in tiny pens that are barely bigger than they are?...penning pigs or veal calves so tightly that they cannot turn around seems to cross that line.” He has expressed my sentiments exactly in his Op-Ed column which you can read at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/opinion/31kristof.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin.

I Think Things are Finally Happening

Well the doc said expect nothing from around 4-8 weeks; for me it was more like 4-9 weeks. With 9 weeks post-surgery just beginning, I actually, finally can feel my knee bend a little when I walk. The horrible stiff peg-leg sensation is no longer and has been replaced with a bend – an ever so slight bend, but a bend – along with pain. The pain in not a sharp pain but rather it feels like something is in the way and there is some type of resistance. When I try to bend my knee, I feel I am trying to “break through” whatever is there and attempting to do that causes the pain. My PT said the pain is from not being able to relax my quad and other muscles and thus something needs to “give” if the muscles don’t relax and that’s why I experience the pain. So my challenge is not so much physical as it is neurological and to get my mind to signal my muscles to relax. It’s harder than you think; tightening muscles are much easier – at least for me. So if anyone has tips on how I can relax those muscles, let me know. Visualization, hynotics, and so on. I'm getting sleepy.

Good Monkey Business in Spain

Spain’s parliament approved a measure to extend some human rights to gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans, becoming the first country to explicitly acknowledge the legal rights of nonhumans. The parliament’s environmental committee approved a resolution that commits the country to the Declaration on Great Apes, which states that nonhuman apes are entitled to the rights of life, liberty, and protection from torture. “This is a historic moment in the struggle for animal rights,” Pedro Pozas, the Spanish director of the Great Apes Project, told The Times. “It will doubtless be remembered as a key moment in the defence of our evolutionary comrades.” Once this measure becomes law in about a year, it will forbid keeping apes for circuses, television commercials or filming. Zoos that currently have apes can keep them but they must improve the conditions to comply with the new law.

Now all they need to do is ban bull fighting and extend these rights to bulls. Mr. Pozas said that the vote would set a precedent, establishing legal rights for animals that could be extended to other species. “We are seeking to break the species barrier — we are just the point of the spear,” he said.

Hopefully this action will indeed set a worldwide precedent and we can follow the wise words of Albert Einstein, “Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Did I Need Surgery or Something Else?

Just got back from another PT session and am even more frustrated than usual. From the PT’s standpoint, it appears the reason for my inability to walk properly is my lack of coordination skills (I’ll never be on “So You Think You Can Dance”) and inability to relax my muscles – my brain wants to control all of my movements instead of letting gravity take its course (if I had my PT sessions at the beach I think then and only then I could relax).

Yes, there also could be something physically wrong (i.e. scar tissue build up or God only knows what) which would probably need to be corrected again surgically – a fear that I had even before the ACL surgery. But there is definitely a problem on my end and I now wonder if surgery was ever needed in the first place as the problem wasn’t in need of surgical correction but of mental and physical training.

I just don’t think, at this point, surgery accomplished anything. I am worse off now than after my injury. I can’t bend my knee, I can’t extend my knee, I can’t walk correctly and my knee is still swollen. Tomorrow will be 9 weeks post surgery. To me, I am now going through the worst time of this whole ordeal including the injury itself (January 20), PT/rehab after the injury (4 months), and surgery (May 24). I’m at my breaking point and don’t want to do the rehab anymore. I’m sick and tired of it – all 6 months of it. Where is the progress?

I hope this is just one those bad days and that I can get back on track and move forward. Once again I’ll anxiously wait for my next follow up with Dr. K. (August 15) and see what he says. I really, really need to hear from him all is fine and these things take time and it’s just taking a bit of more time for me. Just hang in there.