Brave Enough To Be Bliss

needed human contact including hugs and lots of encouragement. I thought I would have time to get bored, but between all that, physical therapy exercises twice a day and trying to work from home as much as possible, there was absolutely no time to get bored. Following is a text communication with my friend Mindy, who is a physical therapist assistant. S he’s the one who invited me to run the 10k and was a high school cross country teammate. She lives in Texas now but was beyond helpful with her frequent encouragement and words of wisdom. Since she understood the surgeries and long recovery I was going through, she was a great cheerleader and sounding board. It turned out I learned a lot about myself through the experience. Weight bearing will probably be determined by your pain. You need to keep your pain tolerable. ROM with sustained flexion won’t be fun as it usually gets stiff with both flexion and extension . Push, yes, but still feel like it needs to be tolerable. Your body is way smarter than your mind so it’s important to listen to it. Remember the more progress you ma ke, the less there is to make, and those last steps generally come slowly. Don’t beat yourself up too much and also remember you’ll still have some hard days just like in life. You’re doing great! Be proud of where you are. Good luck dear friend and thanks for the update Ginger Bliss “Your body is way smarter than your mind so it’s important to listen to it.” Wiser words have never been said. You knew just what I needed to hear, and I feel like I may need to re-read that daily. It is so hard not to be able to work harder and just be well. The lack of control in the healing process is so tough. Physical therapists like you are so smart and have to have immense patience working with patients who are at all points of the spectrum of healing with their attitudes and approaches to handle this lack of control. Those who cling to control like me and overwork, those who have given up on any control and don’t work at all and those at every point in between. It’s like we all need the other kind of therapists along the way to keep our minds right or help us get them that way in order to do what’s needed to help our bodies heal properly. Either end is counterproductive to healing. So, my dear fr iend, I will try to listen to my smart body and not my mind when it tells me to do more than I should because at that point it’s simply fo r my mind (control) not for the benefit of my body. Thank you for taking the time to help me along this journey. I am so very appreciative. Mindy Good news! Congratulations I’ve been walking with about 25% of my weight on that leg this week and the lower graft is really hurting so I’ve got to back off. I am probably leaning in because my quad strength hasn’t built up yet, but I need to walk to help build it up. It’s like everything with this, it’s just hard and a quandary…get range of motion but you can’t have any sustained flexion for eight weeks, and now this. I know I just have to be patient , but it’s very difficult. It’s not like I can even do much and this little bit is clearly too much too soon. They said I can’t rush it, or I could hurt the grafts. It’s not something you can work harder at to make better. You may already get it, but it occurred to me after I wrote that, it’s like my life. I kept trying to work harder and be more perfect so I could possibly be loved, but it turned out the less I worked at it and the more I just relaxed, accepted myself and was open to possibilities, the more I received what I was seeking. It’s like I was working against myself and the more I tried to be someone I wasn’t (perfect) , the worse the outcome. Following my texts with her, I went on to write this.

Perhaps in the same way, the more I fight the stillness of this room, the inactivity, the slower my recovery will actually be.

And as always, just the right song helped give me strength to get through the hard days.

Brantley Gilbert - Hard Days (Lyric Video) (youtube.com)

I had the same two physical therapists through all my outpatient physical therapy which spanned 14 months. A third surgery was required in August when, despite their and my best efforts, my knee simply refused to bend. It was a frustrating situation to have followed all the instructions, worked as hard as possible in physical therapy, and yet not have the outcome that was desired. I wrote a blog about the frustration that finally showed in physical therapy one day, which ended up being a great learning experience. If you want to learn about how to suffer less, it’s worth reading.

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