Milestone… or maybe a half milestone??

I am very excited to tell you that I did something today…that is a big deal for me. Those of you who are regular bog followers know that my favorite thing to do at the gym is to use the elliptical machine. You also know that since surgery I have had a love hate relationship with this machine. I want to love it… and it hates me… or it did…. Not recognizing that I was even working out on it because I wasn’t going fast enough… so it would go into pause mode… which was very aggravating. I set a goal of doing 5 minutes on it without is pausing…and met that goal. Tonight I did more… I did a half of a mile on the elliptical machine… granted it took 7 minutes 50 seconds, which means I won’t be in the running for any races, BUT… I did it.

Today was the fourth day in a row that I have been at the gym… Sunday afternoon… Monday morning – around 8, Tuesday morning at 5:30 – before work, and this afternoon. My right knee had been bothering me…thinking that it has not appreciated having to overcompensate for my left leg for so long. The last few days, as I have been working out, I have been very mindful of not overcompensating… and I think it is helping. I have also changed the order of my workout… I warm up with 5 minutes on the bike, treadmill, or elliptical… then do my weight training and/or exercises from PT… then I do 20-30 minutes of cardio on either the bike or treadmill…or a combination of the two. I think my knees are less tired when I do the PT exercises this way, and think I have better form… so I think it is a good idea.

Today I was planning to warm up on the elliptical machine… planning to do 6 minutes… which I had done the other day… and when I got to that time I was at 0.35 miles or something like that and decided I wanted to get to 0.5 miles. I carefully monitored myself to make sure I wasn’t overdoing it. Then I did the bike… I also opted to not do the in between exercises/weight training because I want to see how just the elliptical machine affects my knee and thought this would be a good assessment…. I had planned on going to the gym this morning before work, but when I woke up this morning I was very tired and had a sinus headache… plus there was the fact that I did not have track practice tonight…that made it doable to work out after work. But I will go in the morning and will do the PT exercises for my knee.

I got an email from the woman who had surgery Friday… the same surgery I had. Her experience is shaping up to be very different than mine. She was discharged from the hospital Monday… though she feels that Monday was too soon. It has been a struggle to control her pain. She was not given a CPM machine and was told that it would bother the rear incision… and there are no plans for PT at home at this point. She is tired, expectedly so and is thankful that her mom is there to help her.

I wish her the best of luck in her recovery… I know it is going to be a hard journey… but you will get through it.