This morning I got up for my early physical therapy appointment at 7am late, as I had forgotten that this was a "PT morning" when I went to bed last night at 7pm. Yeah, I am still paying off the sleep debt from the film festival last week.
So I missed out on a shower and hopped into the car after doing my best to refresh myself and headed to the Aurora River Center to do that rehab thang with Todd, one of the therapists who has come to know me well in the last nine months.
Today I arrived about ten minutes early to my appointment thanks to easy driving along Lisbon Ave. I had the receptionist let me in early to the exercise area and I did 2.5 miles on the recumbent bicycle at level 10, which was good. No pain while doing so. No popping in the knee as had worried me previously. I even moved the seat up one more notch.
I did 4 minutes of forward walking on the treadmill and two 2 minute side stepping sessions. That was also good. I did feel some light hamstring pain while doing one of those.
I did two sets of stepping on the highest step for the first time. After that we moved to the leg press machine where I did two reps of 15 presses with 125 pounds. No real pain there. Good strength.
He had me do two sets of left foot toe touches from a low step while my right leg was bent slightly at the knee. That was tough, as was the single right foot calf raises. I could only do 15 of those.
I did some machine work with weights where I lifted with the outside of my right leg by lifting it away from my other leg to the side, then rotated 90 degrees and extended my leg behind me. The pain I felt here was on the outside of my plant leg. That was exhausting.
Still, through it all I felt that nagging ache deep within my right inner leg, just above the knee, wrapping around to the back. Yep, my hamstring, the ever-present pain since January. It has hurt in so many ways, from feeling tight and leading me to walk poorly so as not to tweak it to intense local pain when deep tissue massage is applied.
Today it was much of the latter. Todd applied some deep pressure to the hamstring while I was prone. I was amazed at how intense and localized this pain still is. My general pain assessment at four weeks post-surgery has been less than 2 on a scale of 10. But this pain was approaching a 9. I felt a disabling burn when he was working one part, then a sensation of tiny needles piercing my skin at a different place. I could have bit a half inch dowel in half I bet.
"So what will heal this damn hamstring," I asked.
"Time," Todd said, "That's about it."
So for now I continue walking through my life with my painful companion. I'm trying everything I can to help it heal, but it's recovery has been slower than I could imagine. Now I regret giving my sports heroes the business for not coming back from a hamstring injury. I used to think they were "dogging it" out there on the field, or sitting out to collect a paycheck the easy way. Not any more. I get it, oh, I get it in a more personal way than I would ever have wanted.
No comments:
Post a Comment