Thursday, July 07, 2011

75 Days and Counting

Noted improvement today!

I've been to three physical therapy appointments so far (next one is scheduled next week), and those, along with my own drive to heal, are allowing me to make good progress. I haven't used my motorized wheelchair in a couple weeks--it's probably done for good now--and I've even stored the crutches in the garage. I use a cane now, and should totally take video of me standing on my front porch, waving the cane, yelling, "Hey you kids, get offa my lawn!" I still have the standard wheelchair, and am planning to keep it at school for trips to the office and such, as our campus is somewhat spread out and even short walks still fatigue me.

But that isn't the good news.

This morning I sat down to breakfast with my son, and whilst eating and talking I happened to look down at my leg. Despite everything I wrote above, I still haven't been able to get that much bend out of it. Some of my leg muscles are coming back online--I can lift my foot several inches now, which means the quads are starting to work again--but getting the knee back to some semblance of normal is going to take a few months more (back in April, the surgeon said recovery would take 6-12 months). Anyway, I looked down at my leg, and I swear it was bent at about 75 degrees. Just sitting on the chair, with my foot resting on the floor, I hadn't even noticed my knee was bent so much. 75 degrees after 75 days!

That's a long way from this.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

that's one great progress Darren!

Mike Thiac said...

How your drug habit doing?

Darren said...

Down to one a day, usually before going to bed so it doesn't hurt at night. But for some reason, it hurts a *lot* when I first wake up, then goes away rather quickly without drugs. Weird.