Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Knee Saga Pt2

Well, inquiring minds want to know: How are you? How's the knee? How are you feel-ling? So, I thought I would write a little note about the knee so far.

To sum it up with yet another quote that never meant much to me before: "Slowly but surely." This whole process is much slower than I anticipated but so far I haven't really stopped improving. I think my leg is finally done shrinking. I am happy that it didn't seem to get that skinny- though it is skinnier than I would like it.

For the last few months, Jed and I have been renting a cute little place in June Lake where much of Jeds guiding work was being done and where I was teaching skiing. That was a great place to recover since there wasn't the commotion of the Zoo (what we call our place in Bishop) and because of its proximity to the awesome Double Eagle Report and Spa. Many of my weekends following the surgery were spend in avalanche courses with Jed (the classroom portion) and in the gym. Typically I would spend 4 or 5 hours Friday through Saturday working out there and doing my PT. At first I would bike with all my might with one leg to get a cardio workout in, then I would do weights and different crossfit exercises and then head to the yoga room for an hour or so of PT. The DE had everything I could ever want for recovery and fitness (except maybe a better rowing machine). Plus they have towels, razors, and brushes to use! So deluxe.

Our lease ended in June and we are officially Bishop residents again. I am still working in the Sierra Mountain Guides office three days a week and pretty much all I do otherwise is Crossfit and Physical Therapy. Yesterday I did two Crossfit workouts as well as my 2 hour PT and my plan is to continue to ramp up my fitness and training. My goal is to come out of this experience fitter and stronger than ever. It used to be that I didn't want to work out too hard since it would potentially interfere with my climbing or skiing. But now days I really have no excuse for not being sore. I wear my soreness with pride since it was several weeks before my body could even handle a workout intense enough to make me sore.

People are surprised to see me out and about. For the record, I am crutchless, braceless (except for at Crossfit) and walk kinda normally. Ok, I don't walk that well yet, I am working on getting rid of a limp that is caused by tightness as opposed to pain. Apparently my ACL was put in tighter than my other one, so a lot of my PT has to do with stretching it out which is a strange feeling at best.

I have 4 new unnatural looking scars that I thought I would like but am not so sure about now. I've been told that they will fade and not be so obvious at some point.

What else?
Have I told you a time line yet? 6 months (end of July) for climbing, opening day for skiing.

Oh yeah- this is kinda cool: the new ligament that they put in my knee is dying right now. Apparently they freeze it in a way that your body doesn't recognize it as a foreign protein. This means that your body won't reject it and it also means that your body doesn't feed it nutrients and stuff. So, as any living thing would, it dies. Then my body is like, oh wait! We can use that thing! So it uses stem cells and some other magic stuff to bring it back to life again. This is why it is so physically weak for 6 months after they put it in. Because it is in the process of dying and coming back to life just like Jesus!
Amazing.
I guess that's all there is to report! Peace!