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May 9, 2008
Not ready for prime time
It poured all night long and was still raining when I woke up. Probably would have been a soggy day to run, but I still think about the weather at workout time, just because it's so ingrained in me. I might have been dry on the bike, but only for a few minutes. When it is humid outside, I seem to start sweating even more quickly on the bike. I sweated through last night's "ER" and the rest of the "Real World" episode that I started yesterday. Everything went well.
Next on my agenda was a visit to Dr. K. (everyone actually calls him Dr. K.; it's not just a anonymity thing), my orthopedist. He is perpetually running late so I was shocked when I heard my name called only 5 minutes after I got there. It took him a few minutes to actually come in to the exam room, but it wasn't bad. Basically he took one look at my knee and proclaimed that it is still swollen (only around the incisions) and that I probably won't be running for another month. (Another month?, I thought to myself. How will I survive?) He told me to "bike and elliptical a lot" and do the following things: 1) take 3 Advil twice a day, 2) massage the swollen/scar tissue areas on my knee as much as I can to get them to go down, 3) ice more and 4) wear a knee sleeve while working out. I hate wearing the knee brace because people feel at liberty to talk to me and ask questions at the gym AND it makes me hot. The rest of them I can do, and I'll try the brace (maybe). The massaging of the swollen areas does not sound fun because they still hurt. I'll do my best.
As we continued talking, Dr. K. told me that I can probably try running in sooner than a month, but that I just have to make sure I don't overdo it and do it on a day when I can be off my feel afterwards if need be. I'm pretty in tune to how my body is feeling so I think I'll know when I'm ready--I added in the biking and then ellipticalling at what I think were appropriate times so I'm somewhat confident I can do the same with running. I am going to set a goal of doing some running before my birthday (June 12), although this is a completely arbitrary marker (that just happens to be a little more than a month away) so I shouldn't put too much stock in it. I keep thinking about how Joan Benoit Samuelson won the Trials after her arthroscopic surgery and how Kara Goucher wrote in her Nike blog about running a couple of weeks after getting a piece of cartilage flushed out. Things are progressing a little more slowly for me, but hopefully they will continue to progress!
Happy weekend to all!
Posted by becky at May 9, 2008 9:28 PM
Comments
I was amazed when I had my knee gash that the trainers thought it was a good idea to press down on it and massage it in ways that were quite painful...definitely not something that would have occurred to me on my own. But it turned out that breaking up the scar tissue was a good thing. Good luck with your continued recovery!
Posted by: Alison at May 10, 2008 8:18 AM