Baby Steps

I haven't written about my leg in a while and there have been some developments so it is time for an update. Physical Therapy has been going well. I've been doing all my exercises regularly (9 different ones twice a day) and Danielle and I have continued to take our evening wheelchair "walks" around the neighborhood.
Yesterday I had a follow up with the surgeon for the first time in several weeks. Friday will be 6 weeks since surgery and even though the x-ray showed that the major fracture and crushed section are not totally healed he gave me the green light to start putting weight on it. I am supposed to continue to use the crutches, while gradually putting more and more weight on my right leg. Last week Jessica, my physical therapist, briefed me on what to expect in anticipation of Dr. Ove allowing this. She told me that the first two weeks would be pretty uncomfortable, that my leg would swell again and that in many ways I might feel like I was going backwards. She said that it would be a shock to the tissues and that they would react, but just like when I started PT, that the more the muscles got used the more my leg would act as its own pump to deal with the swelling and to help in the healing process.
So I did a little walking and standing yesterday and sure enough it was swollen and aching last night. I am extremely slow and it is hard not to just pick my foot up and use the crutches as "normal", but I know that it will get easier the more I do it so I'm trying to do it as much as I can tolerate it.
This morning's physical therapy appointment was pretty interesting. Jessica was pleased to find out that she could add a few more exercises to my routine so I now have 11 to do twice a day.
The bad news came when I was doing my knee bending exercise and she measured my range. I was only getting 30 degrees, when a week and a half ago I was getting 50. Neither of us was happy. So she determined where the tightness was and gave me a deep massage where my quad connects to my knee and taught me how to do it. So now that is also added to my exercise routine. When the sweat equity folks told me that PT was my job now, they weren't kidding. It takes a lot of time to go through all those exercises twice a day and do heat 10 minutes before and ice 10 minutes after each time.
Not that I'm complaining. I want to walk and drive and climb ladders again soon and this is how I'm going to get there.

I just finished reading Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak and in it he recounts the story of his time at Outward Bound. The Outward Bound motto that he learns totally fits where I am - "If you can't get out of it, you'd better get into it!"