Slowly but Surely

This past week has had its ups and downs. For the most part, I feel like I have handled everything with my knee pretty well, but there have been a few times were insignificant things have caused me to have an emotional breakdown (like when I had to decide what to do for dinner on Saturday night haha but don’t worry, by the end of the night my sister and I were in tears from laughing so hard). It always amazes me how much strong painkillers can mess with your emotions... thank goodness I'm switching to Ibuprofen tonight!

I had my first physical therapy appointment on Monday and it went fairly well. Before they actually take you back to a room to meet with the therapist, they have you fill-out/sign a bunch of papers, which was surprisingly hard to do on painkillers haha, luckily my mom was there to help me out with it. On a side note, if you’re reading this mom, thanks for all your help this past week with not only the big things, but the little things also! I feel so bless to have family and friends who have helped me so much lately! Anyways, back to my physical therapy visit. By the end of the visit I was able to bend my knee to about 70 degrees unassisted and about 75 degrees with a little help and a lot of pain. Since I am extremely limited on the number of visits insurance will help cover, my therapist says the main thing he wants to focus on is getting my range of motion back, and any strength I get back will be a plus. One of the pluses of having so many knee issues, if there are any pluses, is that my therapist knows me very well, and by that I mean he even knows about my “love” life, or the lack there of right now haha. He always bugs me about not vocalizing when I’m in pain, and has told me I have almost the highest pain tolerance of anyone he knows. I guess I should stop saying I’m doing good when I first start talking to him at the beginning of my appointments haha.

Earlier this week my mom had an appointment with the same orthopedic doctor from Twin I usually see, so I figured I would tag along to give a little support. Although I was glad to help my mom out, I was surprised at how much talking to the doctor affected me. When he first walked into the room he looked at me and got this remorseful look on his face and almost immediately gave me a hug, which he usually doesn’t do. Before he started talking to my mom about her appointment, he asked me how my surgery went and keep apologizing for missing the original break. Me being, well, me, I kept telling him it was okay and at one point he told me point blank that it wasn’t okay and he felt horrible for missing it. I was able to keep the tears in until he left the room and then I just couldn’t hold them in any longer. Even though he missed something and it affected me in a pretty big way, I would still trust him with my life! It was just that, a mistake.

I think one of the reasons this injury/surgery has been so hard for me to accept is because I was really wanting to do the Cache Gran Fondo this July. I was told by someone I know that they didn't think I could do it but, honestly, that just gives me more motivation to do it! For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a long distance bike ride that takes place in Northern Utah. Ever since I heard about it last July, I’ve been planning on training and doing it. I had even been looking up different training plans for it and was starting to put my own training plan together. There is both a 50 mile route and a 100 mile route. Since this would have been my first long distance bike ride, I was planning on doing the 50 mile route, but I have a feeling my leg won’t be healed up and ready for that kind of strain that soon. I guess there’s always next year. :/

This past week was also finals week for CSI. The only final I had to do was an open book final over the last section we went over in my sociology class, so finals week definitely wasn’t very stressful for me, which was a huge blessing. I haven’t gotten my final grades back for the classes I took this semester, but I feel like everything will look pretty good. As I was leaving campus after the final, it was weird to think that this might have been my last semester as CSI. Nothings finalized at the other schools I’ve applied to, but if I’m accepted to any of them, CSI will be in my rearview mirror. Depending on a few different things, I may be in a different city next semester working and taking a few online classes. We’ll see if everything falls into place like it should!

The only really important plans I have for this upcoming week is a post-op in Boise on Thursday and a PT visit on Friday, the rest on the time I’ll be working on some different art projects that I’ll be selling at the local farmers market sometime within the next few weeks. Should be a good week but I guess we shall see! Have to keep my hopes up that the best is yet to come! :)