Big day

Today I finished PT!!!!  I really will be going back at some point when I am not in a brace to work on some higher level things that I haven't done in 5 years but for the moment I am done and since that stuff won't be urgent I'm going to take at least a month off unless the othopedist sees something that he wants me back in therapy for when I see him next week.

But i met all goals or exceeded them and I cannot tell you how happy I am to not be doing forward and sidestepping step-ups.  After 5 months of them I am totally bored with this exercise which I did nearly every visit, starting with just a couple of inches soon after I started PT and on and off a BOSU (half ball half plastic flat base) the last couple of months.

I've come a long way and had an incredibly good therapist working with me.  I don't think I could have asked for better.

I saw a woman in there today who was talking about ankle surgery but must have just had a scope done or something more minor because she was walking pretty normally.  She's having a lot of pain slowing her down and I kept thinking how blessed I've been with that.  I had bad pain after my scar tissue tore but aside from that I haven't had much pain during rehab.  Today I was sore from a weather change and from realizing that I can finally squat and push up with my bad leg, something I've overdone in happiness.  The last month things have gone so well; in November I was pretty sure and the PT was agreeing that I'd be doing this for another month but the last 4 weeks everything came together and I came really far really fast.

There is still so much to gain.  My endurance is still low, mostly from 6 months of low activity and the 6 weeks of bedrest.  I get tired really quickly.  I still have balance issues and proprioception issues and I have to do a lot of work on retraining my ankle to correct itself.  (ie when I stand on just that leg and it gets tired it will start to turn under and it doesn't automatically make the little movements to correct that which it should do automatically.  That will be something I work on for months).  But I'm walking with barely a limp now and I think when I get rid of this brace, hopefully next week, the limp will start to go away quickly.  I feel weather changes quite a bit but I don't think they can do anything about that.  I still need that leg to gain strength not as much in the ankle as in the calf muscle; it won't ever equal the other side probably because of my 5 year delay in surgery but it will get stronger than it is now.  

But it's all good.  This phase of my life is moving into the next phase, the 2nd 6 months of healing.  Yay!