Last Wednesday I had my six-week check-in with the surgeon. I’m evidently in the “top 10%” of patients WRT recovery. I’ve achieved 0-degree extension, and I can bend to 132 degrees (which is apparently two degrees further than he got in the OR). He was impressed that I’m walking between 5K and 6K steps per day.
He’s very pleased with his work.
Here’s the thing, though—I’m thinking I wouldn’t be this far
along without a lot of support. I have an amazing physical therapist. The exercises
I’m doing now are different from the ones I did before the surgery; they’re
tough and they wear me out. But I can see how they’re helping me make progress.
My yoga instructor is also instrumental in my recovery. My
lessons have fallen on PT days, and there’ve been times when I was heading for
4pm and thinking my body could not do one more thing. But each time, after the
lesson, I felt so much better. Last week I got to camel, and I swear I am going
to someday achieve child’s pose.
My friend the Gift Fairy has been amazing—taking me to the
hospital, picking me up from the hospital, lending me a camp bed so I didn’t
have to climb stairs the first couple of nights, dropping off frozen dinners
and individual ice cream cups, checking up on me every day or two, lending me a
bunch of Agatha Christie novels, taking me to PT when my yoga instructor couldn’t…and
so much more.
People lent me a cane and a walker, offered to stay with me or
have me stay with them, sent good thoughts, put in a word in high places, send
me beautiful flowers—I was surrounded by comfort and encouragement. How could I
not thrive?
And that’s my gratitude for today. It’s a big one.
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