My ATR journey

Well after graduation and my short trip to Detroit I’ve finally settled in back at home.  It’s been wonderful to have a little time off, I guess it’s an up side to not having a job yet.

Ever since I started walking in 2 shoes I’ve rarely gone back to the boot.  My trainer told me to start slow and gradually spend more time in both shoes every day, but that only lasted for a day or 2.  She said the same about weaning off crutches, but the same happened- I just couldn’t go back once I found out how wonderful it feels to have moved forward.  Even though I still have minimal strength in my left leg, my limp is getting a little smaller each day.  I don’t spend a lot of time on my feet, but when I am walking around I make sure to take it pretty slow for the most part, and concentrate on pushing off my toes so I get more of that flexibility back.

Also, tomorrow is my first day of PT at Fox Valley Orthopedics, I’m very excited about that.  I’m hoping they have good things to say about how I’m healing… I haven’t seen my trainer in about 2 weeks.  Also, I devekoped a small blood blister recently and I hope it can be remidied easily.  Has anyone ever developed one on their scar? It doesn’t hurt nor is it very big, but I’m hoping it’s not serious.  Well I suppose I will find out tomorrow.

One last thing- I never knew I would miss running so much! I see it everywhere… TV, around my subdivision, Chris even fit one in on our trip to Detroit.  I initially had a goal of being able to run a 5k by the end of the summer… but I don’t know how realistic that is.  For now, I’m taking what I can get with bike riding; I’ve been going on them with my friend Holly.  Speaking of which, it’s about that time….

Well I did it!  Saturday I donned the good ol’ cap and gown for a 3 hour graduation ceremony and walked sans-crutches across the stage to get my diploma.  I still have the boot on, and got enough funny looks and questions about it, but i’ll take the walking in the boot over hobbling with crutches any day!

The funny thing is, walking up to the stage, across it, and back to my seat was the easy part.  Apparently sitting in my chair wasn’t though.  After sitting through our university president’s speech, she asked us graduates to stand up and give a round of applause and thanks to our parents for being here and helping us get where we are.  At that point I didn’t know where they were, but as soon as I stood up I found them; I was sitting on a row end and they were pretty much straight to my right, just several rows up.  They had known I was there, but I waved frantically at them as soon as I saw them, happy I was able to find them.  But as we were sitting down, everyone else’s chair in my row had stayed folded down, while mine folded up… unknown to me.  Well I got the chair-pulled-out-from-under-you effect and as I was falling to the floor my hat fell off too.  Needless to say my parents were laughing pretty hard.. probably along with everyone else.  Kinda fits me though… always been a little clumsy :o)

This week I head up to Detroit with Chris for a Tigers game, mostly just for the sake of taking a trip.  (I’m a Chicago fan, go Cubs!)  And Wednesday I get to start walking 2 shoes, I’m pretty excited.  As of right now it’s mostly stretching and balancing and ROM stuff, but  I’m excited to get home and back on my bike!

well today was the big day!  I’ve been counting down the days since my surgery and after 6 loooong weeks it finally came around.

I visited the doc last week because of a possible infection.  There was a little scab that wouldn’t really heal, so he took a look and prescribed some antibiotics.  It wasn’t too worried about it, he said it was just precautionary, but I was really hoping that it wouldn’t interfere with my countdown to weight bearing.  He looked at it again today and he said it looked great.  But he also said that he wanted me to keep it still for awhile too to let the scab heal without pulling at it, and to wait til Monday to see my trainer and start with exercises again.   I got pretty upset about this because I thought this would mean a no-go with ditching the crutches.  He almost left it as an afterthought saying, “oh, and of course you can start putting weight on it (still in the boot), and get rid of the crutches.”

Phew!

When I got home it was hard for me to actually tell myself that I could walk around, but right after I made myself breakfast I leaned my crutches against the fridge and started walking around cleaning up the kitchen.  I was savoring being able to carry stuff around and wash off the countertops and unload the dishwasher.  Sounds pretty lame I know, but I kind of missed cleaning our kitchen!

For the most part, I’m very comfortable walking around in my boot.  There’s a tiny bit of a difference in height between my boot and my shoe, but not bad at all.  My heel feels really sensitive, and it’s kind of sore, but other than that I can’t even put into words how great it feels to have freedom back!

AND i’ll be walking for graduation… woo hoo!