Yesterday was my last day of physical therapy. While I'm going to miss Wanda, I am excited that I've progressed enough to be completely personally responsible for my recovery from this point forward. This is where my motivation and drive will really be tested. Do I want my recovery badly enough to put in the hard work without any external forces pushing me? Right now, I do. But sometimes the larger goal gets lost in the monotony of the daily tedium, so it's going to take some will power.
However, it's been really exciting to see the progress I've made, and I think being able to experience the tangible results of my hard work will provide an awful lot of incentive. When I first started therapy after my surgery, I could only partially bend my knee, I experienced pain walking up and down stairs, and I couldn't stand for more than a few minutes at a time. Today I walked down a flight of stairs with no pain and I walked on a treadmill for 2 miles. And yesterday I actually ran! It was only for 30 seconds on the treadmill, and that was long enough for me to feel some pain in my knee and realize I wasn't ready yet, but still, I ran!
I'm definitely not in the clear yet. Even though I'm done with PT, I'm in no way close to being healed. This is just one benchmark along the road to recovery. There's still a possibility (and a pretty good likelihood if I'm honest with myself) that I'll experience setbacks and pain and frustration. But that's kind of the point of a benchmark, right? Despite those setbacks, I have a mark in place that lets me know I've progressed.
I'm looking forward to continuing my progression and establishing new benchmarks. For right now, though, it's just nice to be on the treadmill again.
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