The ankle is getting much better. I'm walking around on it at nearly my old fast walking pace, and I don't limp so much any more. At times, usually when I'm not thinking about it and first thing in the morning, I don't notice myself limping at all. It also depends on what I'm walking on. Going up hill and up stairs is still much easier than going down. In the evening when I've walked a ways, it gets sore and stiffens up still, and can slow me down quite a bit. But I go farther and farther each day.
I've done two whole weeks of physical therapy now, 4 visits to LICH so far. I walk there from my house, and it's about a 30 minute walk to Atlantic Avenue. Twice now, I've stopped and gotten a "calcium supplement" from Starbucks (large white hot chocolate) on the way. I don't like Starbucks coffee much, though I'll drink it. But they have the whole hot milk thing all figured out.
Physical therapy itself has been interesting. It is just the simplest moves. Point my foot up and down, side to side, in circles, the first day. I did like 3 sets of 10 of each of those. I walked out thinking this was stupid, and was considering not going back. I went to work. When it was time to go home from work, my ankle was so sore and stiff, it took me a lot longer to get home than it had just the day before.
The second day wasn't much different, though I did the same moves with a "theraband", which is a just a giant rubber band to give some resistance to work against, to build strength. That visit also added a "Bap board", which is a board with a ball on the bottom. You sit or stand, and put your foot in the outline, and then rock it back and forth, but try to keep control so it rocks, but the board doesn't hit the ground. I couldn't do it, and it was oddly the thing that hurt the most to work on. The long imobilization destroyed my fine motor control of that ankle. I can either hold it neutral, or it can be all the way up/down/left/right. Moving it thru an arc is a sudden jerk of my foot to nearly the full extention in whatever direction I tried to move it. Even after having worked on this thing for 3 times now, I still can't do it, though there might be some small improvement.
The third and fourth visits added new things to work on, but most are variations on what I'd been doing. I also get ultrasound each time too. It is a normal ultrasound machine like they use to look at babies or something, but there is no display screen. This is supposed to help in some way, but I'll be damned if I can notice any difference.
The walks home have been, much more leisurely than the walk up. Tuesday this week, I decided to walk across on Hicks, rather than up Atlantic to Court and across to my place. I only have to do a half-day at the customer I'm at this week, and had arranged things so I had some time before I had to be at work in Manhattan. I saw what looked like a park off to the left, with the water beyond. Turned out, it is the famous Brooklyn Heights Promenade. It has possibly the best view of lower Manhattan of anywhere in the area. It is beautiful, and it was a nice walk. I ended up going thru a part of my neighborhood I haven't seen yet, that part that lies on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Thursday, I walked home on Clinton Street, which is one block off Court. I walked by a barber shop, and needing a haircut badly I stopped in. This place is my new barber, so long as I don't find a place closer to my home I like. (There is a place closer that I don't like.)
Two more weeks of this. I do exercises each day, generally twice a day. But at this point, it is all just warmups for the actual visits, which seem to mess me up more, and have the equiptment they have me work on.
Despite the fact my ankle has been swollen and sore for two weeks now, it is getting better. A couple days ago I put my pants on by balancing on the bad ankle long enough to put my other leg in. This astonished me, because I hadn't realized it was getting that strong. It was an accomplishment.
But still, it's not getting totally better way damn fast enough.
Posted by Wookie at March 8, 2008 12:53 AM