The good and the bad

I saw my physical therapist yesterday. I look forward to these visits, because each week I expect to get to do more stuff. He gave me several new exercises, clams, and others I can't remember the names of. Many of them are "closed-chain" on all-fours kinds of deals. I asked about "water walking"-- apparently it is just walking in the water, on the ground, not with an aqua belt. Aqua jogging with a belt isn't until 5 weeks. Argh. But the good news-- I get to hop on the exercise bike, at minimal resistance, but still, a real milestone.

So I gave the bike a go for 10 minutes yesterday and that felt good. And I planned on doing 30 minutes today, but 10 minutes into it, I started thinking about how I'm in danger of repeating old patterns....the bad ones, the patterns where I push things too far. Hmm.... So, I stopped at 15 minutes. And I'm glad I did, because my leg actually felt *tired* afterwards. 15 minutes on an exercise bike at minimal resistance....wow. So now I'm starting to understand things better. My doc went into the joint compartment of my hip and did all sorts of stuff. I understand that, and I should be careful because my joint is healing, but I guess I didn't understand that the muscles, for whatever reason, would be really weak after the surgery, and I need to be that much more careful. OK, got it. I don't completely understand why, I mean, the muscles are there and they look normal, haven't gotten any smaller, but I definitely *feel* it. So, over the next couple weeks, I'm going to try to work up to 30 minutes on the bike. That sounds like a reasonable goal. One goal at a time....I'll try to be good.

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving, we're flying to see friends in Michigan. But before we go to the airport I'm going to the end of our street where the Turkey Trot course is, and I'm going to yell my head off for the 1000 or so runners, walkers, and baby joggers, many of whom I expect to know. As an added bonus, I won't be wearing my hip brace. It's been 2 weeks, and I'm tossing it.