Well, it has been quite a while since my last update - life is crazy busy with two small people, a business to run and a postgrad course to get finished. Throw into the mix one child with suspected appendicitis (thankfully turned out not to be) and a month of winter illnesses hitting the family in quick succession - complete with the inevitable kids at home not school challenges - and, with the best will in the world, this blog just wasn’t going to get written.
But kids now in bed, hubby at the football and vaguely on top of work, I’ve got a window to get something down so here it is and there’s quite a lot to update on.
Back to basics
Starting where I left off last time, I’d been making an effort to get into the gym to get some physio and treadmill walking done (got to get some kind of cardio even if it’s low impact) and had taken everything back to basics in an attempt to tackle the PGP and dodgy knees in tandem.
The idea was to do 30-minute treadmill walk in the gym after dropping the kids at school, spend a morning working from the business room, then head back upstairs to do 30 minutes of physio in my lunch break. Absolutely basic stuff to get the strongest possible base to build from: diastasis recti exercises; pelvic floor stuff; shoulder bridges, side steps, side leg raises and clam shells with theraband; then quad sets and straight leg raises.
I started keeping a diary to monitor trends/progress - ie if something hurt, did it begin to get better or worse as the week went on, and scoring PGP and knee pain on a scale of 1 to 5.
I managed about two weeks like that - fitting in 3 or 4 sessions a week - before the illness cycle kicked in and, in general, I felt like I was making some progress.
While the knee initially hurt if treadmill incline went above 5 or I tried walking at 6kph for more than a few minutes, this seemed to improve over time and the PGP pain was also seemingly less invasive day-to-day. Whether that’s down to the exercise, the relaxin finally leaving my body (it has been nearly five months since I stopped feeding the little one now) or a combination of both, it was something to start working with.
Bring your parents to gym day
Confidence up, when the eldest came back from gymnastics with a letter about ‘Bring your parents to gym day’, I was torn about what to do for the best. Clearly, I’d love to go and do a gym class with her. Clearly, doing so would probably not be the smartest idea in the world. But clearly, she was very excited about the concept and I didn’t want to let her down. So, after much umm’ing and ahh’ing, I decided to give it a go and ordered a basic knee support to give me a little extra stability if I needed it.
It. Was. Fab!
Having set some rules that I wouldn’t do anything high impact - so no vaulting, no round offs or dismounts from bars/beam etc - we had a great time doing backward rolls down the tumble track (more difficult than you think when one leg doesn’t bend properly!), cartwheels (just the one set as I could feel the knee - my lead leg - pulling as I got towards the end of the track); upward circles, casts (adult pelvic bones - ouch!) and back-hip circles on bars; and dancing up and down the beam (minus the split leaps and flic layouts where they used to fit in the routine).
She loved it. I loved it. I came out on such a high. I had totally forgotten what it is like to actively enjoy something so purely, so viscerally. Yes, the DOMS set in next day (of course) but they were so worth it and reminded me that I need to try to find something that can make me feel that happy - the way gymnastics and dancing does - on a more regular basis. I even contemplated going to the other gym club in the city’s adults gym class in the New Year, but that’s a weekly thing so maybe too much too soon.
Sadly, that prediction turned out to be right.
Getting up to more monkey business
While the kids being off sick for much of the next month meant I didn’t get to the gym to continue the physio/walking programme anywhere near as much as I’d like to have, the pain levels definitely seemed to be getting better even without the ‘physio’, which makes me thing the relaxin certainly made things worse than they may have been otherwise.
On a high from the gym class, I agreed to go to the local forest with some of the school Mums to do Go Ape (I much prefer doing something to get to know people over standing in a bar making awkward small talk). Some of us had taken the kids earlier in the year so it was time for the Mums to step up and take on the ‘grown up’ course.
The weather was cold and damp but we were undeterred so two weeks ago, there we were, ready to swing through the trees and remind ourselves that we aren’t over the hill just yet.
I’ve done quite a few GoApe courses over the last 15 years, so know what to expect. I was conscious that some of the activities aren’t ideal with a dodgy knee and unstable pelvis - particularly when the wood is wet and therefore slippier than usual - but I figured I knew which sections those were and so long as I consciously guarded the knee, it would be okay.
And it was. Until the very end. Zip-wiring down the from the final course, looking forward to hitting the pub for a post-course drink, I came into land and as my feet came down, my trainer got stuck, knee twisted, popped out of joint and back in again, with all the associated tugging down the Macintosh fix too.
Balls!
With hindsight, I should have given more thought to the zip wires. There are basically two ways to land: running it out if landing forwards; or digging your feet into the wood chippings to slow the landing when coming in backwards. I know I can’t run it out forwards - my lolloping run can’t keep up with the speed, which only leaves the latter option and, of course, now I come to think of it, that’s a really stupidly obvious way to twist and overextend your knee - dodgy or not.
Sooooo, having taken a moment to let it settle and limped off the course - reassuring the team they didn’t need to complete an accident form as it’s just ‘one of those things that happens with me’, I headed home via the chippy.
No regrets
Is it frustrating? Yes. Do I regret it? No.
I’ve spent the last five years or so sitting everything out and being sensible. With that and the ‘bring your parents to gym day’, I’ve had a laugh with people and enjoyed being able to join in. I love doing this kind of stuff. It makes me feel alive.
Will I do a zipwire again? Probably not. I can’t think of any way to make it safe for me - and that’s a real shame - but I don’t regret the fact that I did it this time. In a perverse way, it also reassures me that I’m not going mad and imaging the problems all this time after the RevACLr surgery. The joint clearly isn’t right. It’s what I do about it that’s up for discussion.
Nearly two weeks on, as I write this post, unfortunately it hasn’t really settled down.
It’s difficult to straighten without pain, it jars if I move in the wrong direction or put my foot down in a way it doesn’t like, and it’s definitely more wobbly again but I’m really not sure what I can do about it. Can it be fixed or is it just something I have to live with? Maybe investing in that brace will ultimately be the answer if it can’t be physically fixed but may allow me to keep doing some of the stuff I enjoy. Let’s see.
For now, it’s coming up to Christmas and party season. I’m going to go out and enjoy myself. Wear heels if I want to. I can come up with a plan in the New Year.
Scores on the doors
Which brings me to the CKS/OKS etc scores. While I haven’t updated the blog, I did record my scores before the GoApe incident so I’ll add those to the list and, in the next few weeks, a friend has volunteered to put them into a graph so I can see more clearly if there actually were any trends through pregnancy, feeding and beyond (I can’t figure out how to show the time aspect of the graph accurately so will post as again as soon as that’s sorted).
That will be the end of that set of data as anything I record now is clearly going to be influenced by what happened a fortnight ago.
It’s not a great, scientifically-reliable set of data but it is something - even if anecdotal - that is out there as a reference point for what is a very niche area of ACL experience. Hopefully it will be useful to someone who finds themselves playing the pregnancy/feeding game when they have/a history of ACL injury.
For now, have a fantastic Christmas and I’ll update again in the New Year.
