weight-bearing, days 7 & 10

I told you little curious monkeys I'd keep you updated on my walking progress! I'm still mostly doing 1-crutch walking (as seen on day 7), but on Monday in PT I got to try zero crutches, so I've been playing around with it just a little bit (it's relatively painful so I'm not doing much).


I hope you guys enjoy these weird little videos...it's quite a slow process on my end so I'm trying to just give the highlights.

2 feet down! (follow up #3)

Last week I went to my doctor/surgeon for a follow-up. He said my bones looked strong and were healing great - his exact words were "it's solid in there". (Yes, "solid" is a great descriptor for what's happening in there, it's still so fucking tight). He said I should continue to ween myself off of the crutches until I'm just walking in the boot, and estimated that in about 3 weeks I should be out of the boot and into a sneaker. He also said I could start playing around with putting both feet on the ground...so I did:

 

This video is the 2nd day of putting 2 feet down - the first day I tried it I found myself sobbing uncontrollably from relief and happiness and joy and I think a little bit of fear.

 SUMMARY!!

Where I'm at right now: Walking with 2 crutches & boot when outside, walking with 1 crutch and the boot when inside.

Where I'm headed this week, hopefully: Walking with 1 crutch and boot outside, walking with only boot inside.

Where I'm headed after that: Move to boot-only walking, then when I get out of the boot and into a sneaker, the crutches come back until I'm strong enough to not need the extra support.

So that's that. I didn't blog much last week because not much changed. Or at least it didn't feel like it in the moment, but looking back I guess there is some stuff of note. My range of motion improved by several degrees each way, I got more interesting exercises to do at PT (including using the pilates reformer machine), I'm up to 14 minutes from 6 on the recumbent bike, I finally got my hair done (NOT pictured below), I took a really long walk to get some excellent cheesecake...oh and I bought some towels at Target and rode this thing:

the slip

I slipped on the way to physical therapy yesterday. In between the parking lot and the building are a bunch of these big terrible tiles that, when wet, are slippery as shit.

They put that cone out there AFTER I slipped...thanks guys. 

As you can see, there's no escaping these tiles when trying to make it from the parking lot to the sidewalk, and on my way inside it was raining quite a bit - no bueno. My crutch slipped out from under me, and to catch myself my bad foot instinctively slammed down onto the ground. I felt billions of little foot nerves all scream out at once. It prevented a fall, but it scared the bejesus out of me and made my foot and ankle feel really crappy.

I walked inside like "uh I just slipped outside on those dumb slippery tiles" and the receptionists were like "oh man, that sucks". So I sat down in the waiting room for a few minutes before asking to lie down and maybe get some ice. They obliged and my therapist came in to see me, performed some tests on my bones and tissue (she's so smart and good and I love her), and said everything looked okay, but I should just keep an eye on it and let her know if anything gets swollen. Then, instead of doing my usual exercises she just did some massage, some ice, and we filled out an accident report.

I left feeling pretty ouchy and bruised, though my foot looked fine, and then I watched "The L Word" the rest of the day...worst show ever.

Oh, at the very end of my PT session, my therapist SHOWED ME HOW TO WALK...which I start doing tomorrow. I'm thinking about making a video for you guys...baby Mihal's first steps :)

follow up #1 - stitches out

I had my follow-up appointment 2 days early because I was scared that I had bloodclots in my leg. If you don't catch them they can crusade up to your lungs or heart or something and kill you. Of course, I knew I had all of the symptoms - crampy calf, shortness of breath, etc etc - and had a panic freak out while J was at a barbeque, my first time home alone. I made him miss the fight with his buddy, and instead he had to watch it with me in bed as I fell asleep and twitched and had nightmares and made him hold my hand. Anyway, I got tested for blood clots and didn't have them.

Instead of removing my non-existent blood clots, they removed my cast and took my stitches out. The stitches looked like this:

Yes, very hairy legs - you're gonna wanna take this time to get used to that. So anyway that's the outside of my right ankle, and there's a few stitches there on the front. Want to know what it looks like inside??

8 screws and 2 plates - it's an impressive sight to behold I think. After taking my stitches out, which nearly made me faint, they stuck on these little incision holders, gave me a walking boot (which I'm not allowed to walk in but I CAN take on and off), and sent me on my way. Oh what's that? You want to see the incision holder stickers?

Those gams won't get un-hairy for another little while, so I suggest you get used to it (how about our gorgeous purple wall though, right?!).