A Dead Horse?
Me traipsing down some stairs on a trail in Ithaca last month.
You are probably sick of hearing about my knee, but I want to talk about it one more time. It’s been a little over a week and the recovery has been quite fascinating.
Last Monday it was swollen and extremely hard to move. I stayed off it for the most part, iced, elevated, dangled, etc. Tuesday morning saw vast improvement but it was still difficult to maneuver on it. And as the day progressed it got worse.
In general, it always seemed best first thing in the morning as fluid got to reabsorb overnight and sleeping kept it mostly elevated. Each morning was much better than the last.
So Wednesday I was much more inclined to move on it and took a couple walks.
Thursday I moved a little more and Friday I even did a workout. By Saturday I was able to help move things upstairs and paint and blow leaves and other yard work. I did pay for that a bit later on but it wasn’t too bad.
Now the progress isn’t quite as dramatic since most of the swelling is gone. The big shift in the past two or three days is that I’m forgetting it’s injured sometimes and that’s making me tweak it by moving a little too fast. I call this the “danger zone” of recovery because I know I can easily do something stupid because I’m lulled into a false sense of security.
When I first re-injured it a couple months back, I could not mentally handle it. I thought I’d done some real damage and it took at least a week before I realized I had mostly recovered. So this time I had that history to help me and while it was frustrating not being able to do everything I knew it was just a matter of a week or so before I was back to full-ish mobility.
I’ll keep doing low-impact workouts (probably with a TRX since it offers good range of motion with support) this week and then start amping it up by the weekend. Hopefully. The best way to manage a meniscus tear is to strengthen the muscles in the leg so I know I need to be focusing on that. It’s the hardest thing to do right now, but should be easier by next week.
In the meantime I’ve been working on something else that will impact the blog and my life overall. That will be the topic for next week, but here’s a hint: I’ll be getting personal.
