I'm actually posting this update a full five weeks after I wrote it. I just discovered it, sat on my desktop, while wondering whether I ought to update again. It was written one particularly challenging evening, when I needed to sort things out in my head, then decided it was probably a bit too raw to share. Having re-read it this evening though, it's real. And that's one of the things I always promised myself I'd be on this blog. The good, the bad, the blah. I'll get round to a more recent update shortly - still lots of swirling to sort - but for now, settle in....
21 April 2024
Two weeks after my last physio session and the knee is frustratingly still giving me grief. I haven’t yet managed a full week of physio since my last appointment without having to step it back for a day or so due to pain levels but there’s a slightly deranged part of me that feels compelled to keep trying the things that hurt, just in case it’s better this time, and also because I don’t want to stand still, let alone go backwards.
I’ve got further than I have at any point in the last 8 years with this rehab and I need to believe I can still keep moving forward, that I’m working towards a better outcome this time, and that set backs are all part of the process, I just have to keep going.
What that better outcome is, I don’t actually know. Being on the rehab trail has become so much part of my lived experience for the last 14 years (since the first reconstruction) that I’m not sure I do believe I can really get there again, nor do I know what ‘getting there’ actually looks like any more. But going back to the gym and doing what I’m supposed to means I still moving forwards, right?
This week hasn’t been the best. My knee has been more uncomfortable walking than for a while and my shin is sore too, all of which was compounded by needing to wear heels for a day because I was on duty for a royal visit so jeans and trainers really wouldn’t do. Net result? Limping back to the car after a couple of hours on my feet and swelling +3cm even after icing that evening.
The sensible thing to do would be to keep it off it for a few days - which I did for one - but I could’t stop myself going back to the gym after that to carry on with the physio plan regardless and also to try to work out what is going on.
While I can definitively say my knee feels more wobbly and painful in general since it gave way again, and I also have pain to differing degrees from mid thigh down to lower shin now, it’s difficult to identify what the repeatable issues are. That makes me question whether it’s actually painful and wobbly at all or just all in my head. I’ve been living here so long now that maybe I’m projecting what I’m used to on to my physical self?
I also really don’t want to lose the momentum I’ve been slowly building at the gym over the last few months as I kid myself I can finally see a bit of a waist returning, and my hip and wrist bones are becoming clearer than they have been for a while. None of that should matter in the knee rehab scheme of things but, as anyone with PCOS will vouch, losing weight is such a seemingly impossible process (in stark contrast with the ease of gaining it) that even the tiniest glimmer of positive progress on that front is very hard to walk away from, even for a day or two.
On Saturday, I decided to do a bike and proprioception session. The knee was sore on the bike, which was unusual, so I kept that down to 25minutes and reduced the RPM. It was then surprisingly okay on the hops part of the proprioception afterwards, which is usually when it’s at its most grumpy.
Today, I decided to test the running again. Kill or cure. It was still sore enough to stop after every minute interval and walk it out, but not too bad as I approached the 30 minute mark. After that, I couldn’t do single leg extensions at all though (had a PB earlier in the week) because of the strength of the shooting pains through the knee and how wobbly it all felt.
It’s all just so inconsistent.
The obvious next step is to go back to see the physio earlier than planned and get another take on it. Friends told me weeks ago to go back to see the consultant again too but I don’t want to be ‘the mad patient’ (even if I am). So, I’m going to stick with the timelines previously set out and just deal with things when I’m due to see them anyway (which in the latter case means not at all, at present).
I can’t work out why I feel like a fraud in this whole process. I’m sure people on the outside must think I’m faking it too - especially when everyone else I know rehabbing an ACL injury seems be doing really well. It feels like I’m just being overdramatic and making a fuss. Progress was pretty good until Palm Sunday and then, well, the wheels fell off.
Maybe the roots lie in being told by my gym coaches that I was faking the original injury - way back in 1990 - just to get out of training, and then carrying on for six months before I eventually had to quit. I think these days we’d call it something like gaslighting. But for heaven’s sake, I’m a grown, allegedly capable woman with two kids and my own business. Why am I still telling myself that now?
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