Friday, November 17, 2017

Four Months Post-PAO

Four months, people! Four months! Seeing as how I've gotten super lazy about writing, the four-month mark seemed like a good time to pop in and say hello. My progress continues to be slow and steady, and I'm okay with that. I'm happy. Really, I am. I've been mostly crutch-free for about two weeks now, and unlike other times in my life when I haven't been able to contain my excitement over ditching the crutches, this transition happened slowly and steadily with little fanfare. I've been weaning off of crutches over the past month or so, and I'm almost done.

This recovery is about more than just crutches, though. I still have a long way to go, and when I look at it from that perspective, I feel discouraged. I still have a really hard time going from sitting to standing. If I've been sitting for more than a few minutes and get up to go somewhere (which I do frequently in my job), the first 10-15 steps are super painful, and I can barely walk. Also, I still have profound weakness in my hip flexors, and I still need to use my arms to lift my leg into the car and into bed. This is super frustrating and is one of those things where progress is happening at the excruciatingly slow pace of, like, 0.0001 mm of improvement a day.

But on the upside, I have almost no pain when I'm sitting. Before the surgery, I had pain no matter what I was doing. It was inescapable. Now I only have mild discomfort when I'm walking, but it's sooooo much better, and I have to keep reminding myself how much pain I was in before the surgery. I've also made a lot of progress with respect to my hip flexors, despite the fact that it's been slow. Since my last appointment with my orthopedist, I've been trying very hard to at least do my hip flexor exercises, and it has paid off. I'm able to go up stairs now, like a normal person (more or less) and am pretty much done with elevators. Yay! My handicapped parking tag expires at the end of this month, which means I'll have to go back to parking about four flights of stairs away from my office, and I'm okay with it!

A huge challenge is that I've been sick for over a month now. I'm finally starting to get better, but I'm still needing cough medicine to get through the night, which is ridiculous. My poor body is fighting too many battles. Probably my biggest victory over this past month has been accepting my reality and my not-exactly-textbook-perfect recovery, and being okay with it.

I've also accepted that I have this condition that I'll likely be dealing with - at various levels - for the rest of my life. But I'm so much more at peace with this than I was before because despite everything, I've been able to power my way through and live a fairly normal life. I was able to return to work after just two months, and despite the fact that I was self-conscious about teaching on crutches, I did it, and it wasn't nearly the big deal I had made it out to be in my mind. For all my students know, I've never been able to walk without crutches, and to them it's just part of me. I enjoy the look of surprise on their faces when they see me just... walking. Like a normal person.


October 11th: 13 weeks and two days post-arthroscopy, 12 weeks and two days post-PAO
Preparing to make my last trip across campus on two crutches!


October 16th: 14 weeks post-arthroscopy, 13 weeks post-PAO
Preparing to head across campus with just one crutch


The crutch is just kind of a part of my life.
(And it's okay. :))

As Christian has been asking me to do for so long now, I've finally learned how to go easy on myself. And it's a great feeling.