Day 63: 9 weeks + Another IMPOSSIBLE Tuesday and PT Session #7

*9 week surgery anniversary*

ALARM 6:30 am

Only got 6 hours of sleep, and woke up just 7 hours after taking a percocet last night.  Duty calls...so I had to get up.

My ankle was still in pain and swollen.  I am starting to think that my foot is really not liking even low levels of full-weightbearing.  It also still absolutely HATES not being elevated.

I had a meeting at school from 9:00-11:30 am, but I was able to elevate my foot on my walker the entire time.  My foot was ok at that point.

Then, I had to do class prep and teach my class from around 11:45 am-2:30 pm.  For almost 3 hours, I was standing most of the time and "walking" around.  The lab was really involved and I had no choice but to be on my feet.  By the time my students left, my ankle was SCREAMING and SHOUTING for me to elevate and/or ice it.  I didn't think I would make it from the building to my car, even with the assistance of my walker.

I had to hurry because I had my PT appointment at 3:00 pm.  When I got to the car, I took a deep breath, shamefully popped some acetaminophen pills (2 days of drugs!), and drove to my appointment.  My foot was still in a lot of pain, so I had to use my walker to get in the clinic.

I was so disturbed by another IMPOSSIBLE day at school that it was hard to focus on my exercises.  My therapist could tell that I was having a rough day and offered all the support and encouragement he could.  He also added some fuel to the fire by making me work on my toes. Since I had my flexor digitorum longus transferred (flexes small toes) and I have been non-weight bearing for so long, I have poor control of them.  He had me try to spread my toes and then curl them to scruntch up a towel.  My challenge was to keep opening and closing my toes to scruntch the entire towel all the way to me.  It was the hardest thing that I have ever had to do in PT so far.  I told my therapist that I really don't like doing things that I am not good at, I mean who does?  I understand that I have a lot of work to do to get the function back in my foot and that I am going to have to do tough things, but it doesn't feel good to not be able to do things.  There is just so much I can't do right now, add scruntching a towel with my toes to that list.

After that, he made me pick up the marbles with my toes.  My toes were so tired from the towel scruntching that I couldn't really do that either.  This session was going from bad to worse.

We finally got over to the training area to do some exercises.  He made me do 40 forward step-ups and 40 lateral step-ups on my bad leg.  That tired me right out.

I then had to do 40 squats with a medicine ball balanced between my back and the wall.  Want to talk about tough...geez.

Next up, my most favorite exercise to hate, weighted abduction and knee ups.  He made me do 60 lbs this week! Up from 50 last week.  Luckily, he cut the reps down to 30.  He also made me do 30 leg curls at 60 lbs.

Silly me thinking I was done...off to 20 minutes on the bike.

I told my therapist that he won today.  He said, "When I win, you win."  I don't admit defeat often, but as he pointed out...the more I am challenged in PT, the more progress I will make.

Ice.

2 hours later, I was finally released to go home.

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Every Tuesday, I have high hopes that I will get through the day without breaking down and wanting to quit everything. I am still waiting for that day to come.  Sadly, I know that the old me died 63 days ago.  This new me is nowhere near as strong and resilient to adversity.  Life=STRUGGLE for me and it really makes me question if this is all worth it.