The week in review

For the first couple of days this week my lower back has been a little bit sore.  I had some trigger pointing on Monday which released it but it was pretty quick to tighten up again.  I've kept moving and applying heat when I'm seated and it has helped.  I think it might be a combination of not setting my core properly for the whole pilates session or compensation and adjustments due to changing my cane to my left hand.

I'm not sure if I covered the change to the left hand for the cane.  It has been just over a week that we decided to give that a go.  My walking isn't good enough for no support at all when I'm out of the house and walking distances but I don't need very much assistance anymore.  As my left leg has become the stronger side with more range we have swapped over.  I walk a little straighter holding it in my left hand but it feels a little odd.  The positive is that it feels a little odd in both hands now that I'm not really using it a great deal around the house.  A couple of times I've opened the front door to go out and realised as I went to lock up that I didn't have the cane with me.  It is progress.

So the focus of my daily exercises, hydro and pilates is to bring the right side up to scratch, focus on setting the core and getting the right glute firing as well as the left.  Alignment is taking a lot of concentration as I learn where everything should go.  I've spoken about this quite a bit in the last few months and it is still something I am conscious of all of the time.  Well, maybe not when I wake in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or am in a hurry somewhere but most of the time.

I do wonder if maybe I didn't do enough glute squeezes when I was in hospital.  As I've progressed and hospital was so long ago, I do question whether I did enough.  If I look back through the old posts, I don't think I had the energy to do much more but you always wonder about these types of things.  I have to add a few more in to the repertoire.  I learnt a new way at Pilates on Friday.  Laying on my stomach with my knees apart at neutral and bent so my heels are in the air.  The heels are together like frog feet.  Then its squeeze, hold, release patterns.  Both sides and then one at a time.  Funny things is, that in that position, I can actually really feel the difference between the left and the right.  I can't remember what the name of them is so I can find a better description of what it is.  I'll ask again next Friday and try find a picture as I really don't think that I've given you a proper description.

Though it's been busy, I am pretty happy with how life is turning out.  Even though I'm not there yet and there are a lot of unknowns, I do feel that I am on the right path in my life for the first time in a very long time.  There is a couple of people who seem to think that I should be miserable and trying to find issue with things.  I think this comes from the fact that things are very different from how they used to be.  I have been focused on what I need to do to get the best results possible out of the surgery and this has meant that I haven't always been available to others.  I was usually the one that could always be relied upon to do what everyone else wanted me to do.  Now that I am focused on me instead of them, there must be something wrong.  I am busy and I have a lot to deal with but I am fine to do that on my own.  When I'm up to it, I need to work in the spaces between rehab activities.  I need to make sure that I'm preparing healthy meals and eating well.  I need to get enough sleep.  I need to be engaging my brain and getting back into things.  There isn't too much time left over after that.  After a period of time things will normalise a bit more and I won't need as much rest on weekends to catchup and rejuvenate and I'll value that extra time a bit more than I used to.  I don't think I've become particularly selfish.  Just enough to be healthy.

Thursday wasn't very fun.  My husband's iMac blew up.  (Well my iMac but there is some question of ownership since I have claimed the MacBook Air!  I suppose it is his now it has been in his office since I got the 27" iMac at the start of last year and possession is nine-tenths of the law, right?  By that logic, I'm on the Air now typing my blog post, so it's really mine right?)  That was a truly tragic day.  There are still other Macs around but this one just can't be replaced.  It's one of the 24" aluminium case ones that they don't make anymore.  My husband's office seemed so sad without it.  It was taken to the doctors and we didn't have a huge amount of hope as to its recovery as the magic smoke had been released after a bit of a bang and that bad computer smell that happens when bad things happen.  Usually there is no coming back from that.  Somehow, this Mac was special and is alive again.  I don't know how but I am thankful!

With the resurrection of the iMac, a switched off telephone and an afternoon nap, today was a good day.  I ruffled a few feathers to have a time out day today to spend with my husband but it is worth it.  With so much going on, I need to remember not to take time for granted and continue to make my priorities a little closer to home.  There has been no 'big issue' to prompt this revelation.  It started with the closure of the last business that I worked for and has progressively become more of a mission.   This was part of the catalyst to do the surgery this year.  It might seem a little bit of a drastic response to the end of a job and it is a little bit more than that.  It is a new start and my body wasn't really up to a new start without the surgery.

I finally received my leave entitlements from the liquidator on Thursday and banked the cheque.  It was a little reminder to stick to my mission.   I did end up doing a rather long day that same day as the young girl at work resigned without notice leaving a rather large mess of uncompleted work.  I was happy to help out and the balance for it today was not doing any work.  I need to be careful not to sacrifice my recovery for work or health.  There are only so many hours in the day and some things will need to be sacrificed, just not anything that will cause me not to reach the full potential of the new joints.

I'm not sure what the plans are for the weekend.  There is likely to be a big sleep in and possibly a coffee run and a hunt for JaMocha Almond Fudge (my latest Baskin Robbins favourite).

Back to Pilates

I went back to Pilates yesterday and it was awesome.  I knew that some of the things that I would be able to do would be things that I've never done before so it was pretty exciting.  The new ranges that I have that have no pain at all, mean that I'll be able to strengthen more muscles and get more out of both the Pilates sessions and my new parts!

Some of the regular exercises that I used to do have been cut back a little bit as far as the number of springs that I am using on the reformer.  I also skipped some of the balance ones that require standing on a bosu and the like, as I'm not ready for those yet.  My strength has dropped a little from my pre-op levels, though I was a little surprised at just how much I was able to do without any difficulty at all.  I'm not quite up to the long spine where the pelvis is lifted (as I spoke about and had images of in Late to Pilates) but I am doing the first part and it is a little wobbly and harder to control than pre-op but still pretty awesome.  I'm not yet doing reverse knee pulls yet - which is also pretty awesome since I really don't like them!

The biggest issue I had was with maintaining alignment.  My brain doesn't seem to know what is straight and I need someone to keep me in line (in more ways than one, but that is a story for another post).  My alignment is significantly better than it was pre-op and I am slowly starting to get things to move in the right way.  Some things feel a little weird, like correcting the inward rotation of my femurs.  I stopped it post op, but as I have been getting stronger and doing more, I have fallen back into my old bad habits.  I'm didn't think that would happen as I didn't do that post-op but maybe muscles had to heal and gain some strength before they wanted to do what was 'natural' to me.  Those so called 'natural' movements weren't really the way that the human body was supposed to move but pre-op it had no choice.  Now, I have the choice to train it properly.

It might take a bit more time yet.  Being able to add Pilates to my already busy schedule means that I'm still moving forward and will be the next step towards being better than ever.

Swollen Knees and Fatigue

My knees are revolting...  as in revolution revolting..  not disgusting revolting (though some might see that the melon like shape is revolting but it really isn't that bad.)  I think they might already be missing the femoral head that is about to disappear and crying in sympathy.  I told them quite sternly that if they didn't start behaving, they would be next on the list to be replaced with a newer, younger and more attractive model!  No not really - not keen on knee replacements, apparently they *really* hurt, rehab is harder, the satisfaction levels are lower (than hips) and I really don't have a need for those.  I do hope that once the hips are done the knees will calm down.

For the last few days I have had mildly sore, majorly swollen knees, likely a result of overdoing it last week, ending up with compensating by rolling in on the femur and putting extra stress on the knees as they weren't being used properly, causing inflammation.  There was no heat (like there was in my right hip last week) so hoping it is just a reaction to the alignment issue rather than the RA flare.  I got an 'it's possible' that this has caused the inflammation from my physio so stuck with that.  Post-treatment I came home with tubigrips that I left on until this morning and like magic my knees are the normal swollen kind not the extra swollen kind.   (Since I was a kid and first had the onset of the JRA, there has been thickening of the synovial fluid. In the beginning there was also inflammation.  Now, my normal range CRP and ESR indicate that it isn't inflamed and causing joint damage which is good!)  I was pretty worn out yesterday and slept a lot longer than normal last night and could still do with a nap this afternoon.  Fatigue is reasonably typical for me when things start to hurt.   I think a lot of it is to do with restless sleep and last night I got to catch up a bit :)

While I was at the physio visit yesterday I followed up the 'what have I done to myself now questions'   with a bunch of alignment questions.  Specifically I am curious as to whether the anterior tilt of the pelvis can be corrected.  As my body has accommodated for the lack of joint spacing in the hip, parts around have moved to give myself more spacing in the joint making it more comfortable to walk.  This was evident pretty early in the piece with a slight lengthening obvious when I started regular physio and regular pilates.  ( I swear I am taller when I come out of physio - and no they don't put me on a stretching rack :)  I don't think that I can get it back to a proper neutral position, though it will be interesting to see how things change once the hip spacing issue is fixed.