Progress

Today goes into the win column. Sure, I've felt a lot of discomfort today, but many good things happened, too.

I can "walk". My left leg, the one with the sliced knee tendon, remains in an immobilizer so that I have to swing it out and left when I want to step, but it's doable. For short distances I'll go without a crutch, for longer distances maybe I'll take just one crutch. Only when I first get up in the morning do I feel like I need both crutches. I've already had my dad take away the walker, which was useful the first couple days after the accident but no longer.

When I first got out of the hospital I was on 6 pain pills a day. That soon jumped to 12, the maximum allowed by my prescription, and now I'm down to 6. I could probably survive on 4 or 5, but I'm going to stick with the plan for awhile. We'll see what happens after I get the staples out of my knee on Monday morning.

I've been able to borrow an iPad and have loaded several free apps and free books, and it's much more comfortable to lie down with the iPad on my chest and read/surf than it is to hold a real book or to sit at my computer. Of course it's not as convenient as my computer is, especially for creating content (like this blog), but for consuming content it's not bad.

I've also borrowed a motorized wheelchair. Can't use it yet, though, because I need a brace to hold my left leg out straight. My dad came over today and we put our heads together--he came back with some aluminum scrap he had around the house and a design/plan that struck me as ideal. It might take him a couple of days to fabricate it, but once done, I'll no longer be confined to my house. I'll be able to get out in the sunshine, perhaps zip up to the library to to the store. Oh, I'll still be quite the invalid, depending for the most part on the kindness of others, but at least I won't be housebound.

Spirits remain high, and so far there have been no complications.

Update, 5/8/11: Last night I tried going 6 hrs between pain pills, instead of only 4 hrs. That would be only 4 pills a day, down from my current 6 a day, which is down from a high of 12 a day. That experiment was a mistake, corrected after only 12 hrs! I learned, though, that the pain pills are only partially for my injured knee; they're also for the rest of my body--right knee, hips, wrists--that are compensating for injured leg. I can't wait for the sucker to kick in, as sore as I feel all over right now.