Elliptical update

After spending twenty minutes on the elliptical yesterday, I woke up this morning with sore muscles.  Without any excruciating hip pain that I would have associated with about twenty minutes of any kind of activity pre-op.  It is pretty amazing.  If I managed to survive for 20 minutes doing that type of activity, I would have needed extra meds before bed, would have suffered with little sleep and probably would have still been limping and in pain today.

I stepped up pretty quickly from the 15 minutes that I did on Monday.  I was probably feeling a little bit over confident after smashing the 90 degree mark and it's gone ok.  I'm a little tired today and won't finish up with that many minutes today but tomorrow I plan to do 20 again.  I figure if I stick to that for a couple of days and get my body used to that activity, I should be able to add another 4 or 5 minutes pretty soon.

I can see!

I picked up my new glasses today, so I am writing my first post wearing them.  It's amazing how crisp the fonts look.  I didn't realise how fuzzy things were getting.  I'm hoping that they also fix the persistent headache that I have had since last week.

It's strange to put on glasses for the first time and sit in front of the computer.  I liken my eyeballs to the little bit inside a camera that controls the autofocus, zooming in and out until the image is clear.  It doesn't take too long for them to bring everything into sharp and clear it is just an odd sensation.  I'm sure I'll get used to them pretty quickly.

More than 90 Degrees!

Today my right hip flexion got to a passive range of 93 degrees.  This is a large jump up from where I was last week and over the magic 90 degree mark that I have been aiming for.  The left is still below, at 80-something degrees (I was so focused on the 90 number, I can't remember the other one) but thats ok.  There was still improvement on the right side and it would have still been an improvement that I would have been happy with, especially with the plateau of last weeks measurements.

I was so excited that I wanted to jump...  I didn't!  I'll save it for the pool on Friday.

Today was a good day for the elliptical as well.  I've stepped up to 15 minutes from my previous 12.  I completed this in two sessions and I think that I could probably even go a third session but I want to wake up in the morning first and see how I feel.  I am using level 2 on the ramp and resistance for most of the time.  I figure that I can get to 30 minutes and then I can increase the resistance and ramp throughout the period and maybe even use some of the proper programmes rather than manual settings.

Hip Flexion Ranges

I realised something on Friday at hydro that I forgot to mention.  I have been a bit hard on myself about my hip flexion ranges and how slowly they are moving now.  On Friday, I tried to get out of the pool using the step ladder, which I knew I couldn't but I wanted to try anyway.  I was about an inch off.  I remembered that a few weeks before I went into surgery, we had to use the outside pool and it doesn't have a ramp.  Reese had to help me get out of the pool because I couldn't do it then.   This is good news to me.

It will be interesting to see if I'm still on that plateau or whether the ranges have increased again.  I'll try again each week to see if I'm any closer to that bottom step.  I'll have to figure out the range next time so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm aiming towards.

Shopping Marathon

I followed up hydro today with a pretty big shopping trip. I am looking for a birthday gift for an eight year old girl and having trouble finding something cool and appropriate.  I started in the city but the two stores that I wanted to go to weren't there anymore.  A lot has happened in the few months that I have been out of action.  This was my first trip into the city since the op and I was pretty confident going in that I could handle the crowds.  There were people everywhere and I was almost run over by various people swarming in all different directions without really looking what was right in front of them.  There was also a man in a wheelchair who seemed to target me in his sights at a fair distance.  I moved in front of a sign to get out of the way and he cleared it and me by about two centimetres.  I felt like I was moving against the traffic most of the time I was there and spent a fair bit of time standing still as to brace myself in case the person barrelling in my direction makes contact.  They seemed to move out of the way  at the last second after figuring out that the person that they were walking towards that was making their way quite slowly with crutches wasn't going to be the one to walk around.  I wasn't intentionally trying to get in other people's way and I tried to stick close to walls and railings as to avoid that situation but it didn't help.

I survived the city and having not found anything in the stores near where I was parked, I decided that I needed a break from walking and decided to head out.  By the time I got on the freeway, I figured that I still had enough energy to hit one section of Garden City.  I had about as much luck there and went home without anything.  It wasn't really a marathon by most people's standards but it was for me.  I am quite pleased by how my body handled that amount of walking.  My lower back is a little bit tight, as are my calf muscles but aside from that everything feels pretty good.  I don't think that I will continue to get lower back tightness once I'm no longer using crutches.

The day wasn't a complete write off.  I did get to go to MBF to finalise my claim for the anaesthesiologist, so at least something is checked of the to do list today.

Unplanned events

This week has been a little all over the place.   It kind of started to go off the rails on Tuesday and I haven't really gotten back on top of things.   That was the day that brought with it a series of unusual and unwanted visual effects in front of my eyes.  It was kind of like there was a filter in front of my eyes causing blurry sections and flashing lights that lasted for about half an hour.  My head hurt but not to what I would expect a migraine to be so I wasn't too sure what the problem was.  My husband was a little more concerned than I was and shuffled me off to the doctors to make sure that it wasn't a post-op complication.

After a full debrief to make sure there wasn't anything seriously wrong, the doctor believed that they were migraine like symptoms even though there was no incapacitating headache with them.  I also received a pretty stern lecture about how serious this type of thing can be if accompanied by other symptoms like numbness or tingling.  I promised that I would get myself to hospital if that happened.  He also requested that I get my eyes tested and a retinal photographs taken to make sure that all is good with my eyes.

The earliest that I could be seen by the optometrist was today.  I received a phone call this morning saying that they were sick and the next earliest was Monday.  I wasn't particularly keen on waiting that long as the mild headache that started on Tuesday is still there and driving me crazy.  I wanted someone else to look and see to make sure there wasn't anything else going.

After just about every test possible and a check of my previous results, my retinas are healthy looking, there are no clots in the blood vessels, it's simply a case of needing glasses for reading 'sometimes'.  The right eye needs a slight prescription (or had a slight prescription, I'm not really sure on the terminology with eyes) and apparently is mild enough to compensate unless I am fatigued or stressed.  Fatigue is pretty well part of my life at the moment so it looks like I need a bit of help now rather than in another couple of years time.  So I need glasses.  Well one eye needs a 'glass' but they generally come in pairs these days.  I'm not sure a monocle would suit my look.

Looking back, I'm wondering whether subconsciously this is part of the reason that I haven't started reading again.  Maybe eye discomfort that I wasn't really aware of above everything else that was going on led to me avoiding reading as much.  I don't know.  All I know is that my head hurts and I really did think that I was finished breaking down for a little while.  I hope that's the last for a little while yet.  They should arrive within a week.

Tomorrow morning is hydro and then I think I'm going to have a nap during the day.  I'm just tired.  It happens.

Guarding my thoughts

Today I didn't make it into the office.

I made it as far as Physio and to one of the venues to pick up invoices and then I went home to start work on them.  I wasn't up to going in today.  I'm not sure if it was the thought of the chair and table that I am using until the person using my desk full time moves into their new office or whether it was inevitable questions explaining how the work I was doing actually fits into the grand scheme of the businesses' future plans that kept me away.  Perhaps it was a combination of both.  

I started off the day with a headache and it didn't really ease until later this afternoon.  My range measurements didn't improve this week either, so not only was there pain there was also general grumpiness and a little despair at the plateau that I've reached.

I've been thinking a lot about that plateau today and have started wondering whether I ever had greater hip flexion than that.  I'm currently at a passive range of eighty degrees but I'm not sure when it was ever better than that.  Maybe it hasn't been since I was a child.  In that case, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than three months worth of stretching to bring it back.  I guess because the abduction range came back immediately, I expected the rest to follow suit pretty quickly.  Under the guise of pain, there were a few tears at Physio today.  You can kind of get away with it when you have your head in the hole and it you are involuntarily jumping each time the pain is sharp.  It probably helps that I'm a girl too.  A little more socially acceptable.   Not that anyone would say anything negative, I'm sure that they would be a great support, it's more that I don't really want to share some of these thoughts.  Not until they've been processed and I can decide how I want to deal with them.  The crazy thing is that is probably the place where how I'm feeling would be understood the best.  

I think the abundance of people who ask but don't want to really know have made me a little more guarded about discussing it especially when I am having a bit of a tough day.  I read a blog a while ago about a girl that had a total hip and wrote a blog.  She stopped blogging when someone made a comment about how that was all she ever spoke about.  It feels like that is where people are at now with me but they just haven't said it yet.  The thing is that this thing is still the central point in my life at the moment.  My whole world revolves around my rehabilitation and the distance there is still to go.  I don't have the energy for too much more than that.  It might seem like I'm projecting that all is good but this doesn't mean that I'm ready to take on anything more than I am right now.  As it stands, I think that I might have too much and I'm not making enough time for all my exercises, that somehow I should be doing more of them.  I worry that this could be part of the reason that I've hit the plateau.  These are just more things that people don't want to know.

I don't know why I thought that this would be any different than talking about the arthritis.  I didn't talk about that too often because those who haven't dealt with it before don't understand living with a chronic condition.  This is an extension of that.  Just because I want to talk about this massive change in my life, doesn't mean that others aren't sick of hearing about it.  I'm thankful for those that have been through this process and those spoonies that can understand.  Even when I have finished rehab and life is better than it has ever been, I'll probably still want to talk about them.  I guess I'm going to have to find some new people to talk to.  Ones that are interested in resurfacing, replacements and MOM joints.  I guess there will always be a place for me at Surface Hippy.  I'll also be able to blog.  People can choose to read or not.  If they don't, well they don't need to hear my hip talk and the important changes that are going on in my life. 

In an attempt to feel like I have achieved something today, I've increased the time on the elliptical today to nine and a half minutes and 500 metres.  I'm not sure how that will treat me tomorrow but I really needed to increase and improve something today.  I feel ok so far so hopefully it will be ok.  If I'm doing well tomorrow, I might try to add another minute and a half.  

Aside from exercise and Physio, I had a little bit of work to do today, though nothing was time critical.  It was more getting a bit of a start on the work that needs to be done this week.  Tomorrow is the time critical day which I already have a good start on.  As for the rest of the week, I guess I will work out as it progresses.  

It's so close

I can feel it.  I'm almost there.  It's not going to be today or tomorrow but maybe another month.  I'm not quite sure which is more difficult to deal with, feeling like it will never end or feeling like it's so close but it still so far away.  I still get tired and needed a really quiet day yesterday to recover from the week.

Today I'm going out to lunch when I could probably would be happier staying at home getting ready for tomorrow.  I picked up some work on Thursday so that I wouldn't have such a big day tomorrow but I haven't even looked at it yet and I'm really not sure I feel like looking at it at all.  I suppose that's a pretty normal reaction to real life and weekends.  

When I get home, I'm going to cook for the next couple of days so at least I don't have to worry about that.  I'm not quite sure what I'm going to feel like only that it has lots of vegetables.  I haven't really had my share in the last couple of days with too many other things going on.  

On Friday, I had physio and we practiced with the cane again.  It's starting to look a lot better but the action of walking doesn't feel natural at all.  My arms don't really know what they should do and my left one just likes to stay still.  Apparently this is quite a normal reaction to injury as the body holds the arms in and it is something that you have to learn again.  When I do concentrate on it and get the pattern right, reduce the hitch in my stride as my left leg moves forward in a straighter line instead of coming around.  I'm not sure why I do this or why this incorrect pattern feels more natural than a proper gait pattern.  

I have to go finish getting ready to go and will finish this post when I get home.

I've made it home and back to the couch where I spent a great deal of yesterday.  I'm still worn out, just with a belly full of Grill'd burger and chips now.  I've still got to get up the energy to get some cooking done for tomorrow as I'm unlikely to have the energy.  I've only clocked up 4 minutes on the elliptical today so far and I'm not convinced that I could step back up onto it to finish of the rest of todays minutes.  I might have a go a little later on, maybe after I've had a small nap.

Before I went out to lunch, I started off with the rest of the activities that filled last week and wore me out.  Friday was a pretty long day.  Aside from Physio first up, I also spent a few hours working at the computer and then went out to the movies in the evening.   I still managed to fit in 8 minutes and 400 metres on the elliptical, so it would have been the longest and busiest day that I have had so far.  On the tails of a full week, I deserved my rest day yesterday. On the plus side, I didn't wear myself so much so I that I couldn't walk without the two crutches like the day that I overdid it.

Tomorrow is Physio day and a measuring ranges day.  I haven't decided if I am going into work tomorrow or Wednesday.   I guess I will just see how I feel in the morning.

End of Financial Year Craziness

And so it starts.  It is my busy time of year and the craziness has begun.  The next two weeks will really be a test of how rehabilitated I really am.  The extra days of work that I picked up about two weeks ago were to start the setup of a new digital setup for cut over at the start of the new financial year. The work that I started a month or so ago has all of the end of year things to do like payment summaries and the like.  Between the two of them, I'm busier than I have been in a very long time.  I'm trying to keep work on just the three days a week so I have four days to make sure that everything else gets done.  I haven't done so well yet as little things are creeping into other days as I'm capping out at about five - six hours of work in a day and some days I really need a little bit more than that.  Mostly this is because of the amount of data entry that I need to get done at the moment to set up this new system.  I don't think that my brain was working properly when I estimated how long the task would actually take.  My brain is getting back into gear as I get back into things.  It's almost there (the setup and my brain!) and I will be going back in tomorrow to keep working on it.  Tomorrow is expected to be a big day so today was a work day reprieve so that I could get a few other things done.

Today's big activity was grocery shopping, which I managed on my own.  I also got all of the groceries into the house by myself, put them away and then organised dinner.  It wasn't a full shop as it is an in between week, so I've started off a little easier on myself.  The last time I went grocery shopping, I went with my husband and he brought everything in so even though it has been less, I still did it by myself.

I'm still at six minutes on the elliptical today.  I was supposed to go up to seven but by the time I had the groceries away and had cooked dinner, I hit the wall and the second session only went to two and a half.  It doesn't sound like much but it is for me at the moment.  My cardio fitness is pretty disgraceful at the moment and will take a little while to recoup.  I haven't been able to do any real cardio activity for quite some time so I'm not overly surprised at the level that I'm starting from.  On the plus side, even though the muscles are fatiguing quite quickly, they are holding up to a lot faster movement than I expected at this early stage.  I'm not quite sure how the speed equates to walking due to the differences in the stride length but for me I think that averaging between 3 - 5 km/hr is definitely a great start.  If I can maintain this speed and improve my stamina, I think I would increase the resistance and incline as part of the program before trying to speed it up anymore.

I'm not quite sure what my walking speed is like at the moment and can't really think of a great way to measure it.  I had thought about using a pedometer when I go out to get a rough idea but it didn't really work out.   I tried using it around the house to count steps but it looks like I still have too much sway as it is counting too many steps.  I had wanted to record the number of steps each day to see the increase in my activity but it looks like it will have to wait for a little while longer.

Trigger Pointing Day

Just a quick note about my knotted glutes (ok I'm being a little more eloquent the other day) and the  adductors that were also *really* bad.    Trigger pointing at physio today hurt like hell but it was worth every single little moment where I wished that I had a leather strap to bite down on.  I felt l the most amazing kind of awesome walking out of there and the nice feeling has stayed with me throughout the day.  

I don't think that my husband could have handled inflicting that much pain to release those pesky muscles.  Only a true professional can do that!  (I know comments like that seem like an open invitation for comment but I'm tired, so please read only read it in the manner to which I mostly intended!)