Diving In

Today was my first day in the pool and I am EXHAUSTED.  It was great to get moving, but it was definitely tiring.  I started by doing some walking in the pool, forward, backward and sideways.  The weirdest part was how the bottom of my foot felt walking on the ground.  It hasn't touched the ground with much weight in a long time so getting myself to do a heal-toe walk was challenging.  

From there I did some leg swings, squats, calf raises, and finally walking on the under water treadmill.  That was the coolest! It helped me stand up straight and not favor my bad leg as much because I had to keep up with the pace.  There were three other hip rehab patients in the pool with me, but I was the only one under the age of 60.  All the other ladies had hip replacements.  It was motivating to me because if I do this right and rehab like I should then I hope to not have to be in their shoes when I get older.  They were funny, it definitely helped the time pass with other people in there with me.  I did a lot today, but it was to gauge how I feel and what we can do in the future.  

Overall I feel like today was a push in the right direction.  It was challenging and I definitely feel like I am making progress.  I will keep you all posted! :)

PT #2

I had my second therapy appointment with Curt today.  I have been doing my home therapy twice a day, but since we are reaching the two week post-op mark, it was time to switch some things up.  I think the thing I struggle with most with therapy is finding where my pain threshold is for each exercise and not going past that.  For an active person like myself, doing leg lifts and ankle pumps are pretty much torture.  I want to try to do more, but I know that's not what I should be doing, so I don't.  

I realized today that I need to start seeing the progress that I am making in therapy instead of the things that I can't do anymore. It's frustrating to feel like starting over, but when I get off crutches I am going to have to learn to walk again, and so I need to be strong enough when that time comes.  I start my pool therapy on Thursday. Curt said I will feel like I can do more when I'm in the pool so I am hoping that is more encouraging! I did get to ride a stationary bike today.  I started just rocking the pedals back and forth and by the end of my 5 minutes was doing complete circles around.  It felt good to get my knee up and moving, it's been getting stiff laying in bed so much.

I will update more after the pool on Thursday!