Day 10 Update

I got a call this morning that I'm officially being discharged from home-based physical therapy. I believe I've demonstrated to the therapist that I'm on the right track - doing the strength and range-of-motion exercises properly while maintaining the proper motion-restrictions to keep my new joint from dislocating. That's a good thing - yet another of the "tethers" I mentioned being removed. It's not as if anything changes - I'm still hobbling around on crutches and "range of motion" means just a few inches in some directions with my left leg... but the process is on track - maybe even ahead of schedule.

Think about the old paradigm for this surgery: A week in the hospital and months of rehab. Here I am, just a week and a day after coming home and no physical therapy is needed. There might be some outpatient PT in my future - that'll be determined, I suppose, but a visit with Dr. Mokris in a month or so.

And, of course, I have to keep up my end of the bargain: Doing the exercises, being careful. I am trying to find the limits, test them, respect them, and nudge slowly through them, I supposed.

Yesterday the therapist showed me how I can rest on my side; I've been sleeping on my back since the operation. Silly as it sounds, it kind of freaks me out to roll over on my side now, even with the new king-size pillows keeping my legs in the proper relative position. It's like I can actually feel my hip when I try it - and not in a good way. So I tried it a couple of times overnight - maybe for five minutes each time. It's kind of like venturing into the deep end of the pool when I was learning to swim - I know I'm a little over my head and I need to do everything just right to get back to the safe place. But there's no way to get good at this - to be confident in it - unless I push past my comfort zone.

I'm glad it's Friday. Even though I'm not at work and I'm only doing an hour or two of work-stuff on my home computer each day, I feel like I should be there with my staff, plugging away, so I welcome the coming weekend as a chance to turn off that feeling. I have an appointment with my primary care doctor Monday morning - he'll now be monitoring my blood thickness, since the PT isn't coming any more. After that, I'd like to be able to go to the office for an hour or two... but that remains to be seen.

Swelling and discomfort are the two biggest issues today - and they were last night, as well. Yesterday was a decent day - I think I'm probably at a plateau point for a couple of days now.

I'm still taking some pain meds, but far less than just a couple of days ago. I wait until the pain builds now - maybe six hours or so between doses - and I'm taking smaller doses. This isn't necessarily an act of great bravery - it's an indication that the pain level is backing down somewhat and it can be addressed with tactical dosing. Before this point, I was trying to stay ahead of it; now, I can wait for it to show up and deal with it. That's a good thing.

More rest today... my body needs it.