Today I woke up feeling a bit uncomfortable; I straightened the immobilizer out a fair amount last night (too much it seems for comfortable sleep).  Hard to get going but once I started the PT I felt much better.  I started with the standing weight-shift which I bumped up to 4 minutes.  Then on to passive extension (5 minutes); heel slides (20); the 3 leg raises (25 each) and finally hamstring stretch (1 minute).  During PT I decided today is the day to get back to the office, so I texted my co-worker and got my ride worked out.  Kammy got back from dropping Z off and helped me get ready for my first day back.  Getting to the office was fairly uneventful since all of us had done this before when I was recovering from the initial injury.  Now…let’s see how this day goes.

Work

I am fortunate to have a desk job.  I’m a web programmer/developer and can work from home.  That said…since I manage people it’s better to be in the office.  Work was uncomfortable but manageable.  Really, I think being there took my mind off of my hamstring a lot of the time.  Offsetting that was that I have to go a lot further to do anything.  Oh, and I have to do it.

I have a co-worker that I carpool with who has been kind enough to do all of the driving during my non-mobile parts of recovery.  He’s gracious enough to give me door-to-door service during the ‘worst’ of the days.  Today he dropped me right out front so all I had to navigate was 5 steps up, 2 doors, 1 elevator and about 50 steps back to my office.  From my office it’s about 25 steps to the kitchen (important for coffee and my icepack) or bathroom (just important).

Workday was uneventful except for lunch (more on that to come).  My hamstring hurt most of the day (I still have a significant full-time Charlie-horse) but thankfully I had no muscle spasms.  The day was going well!  I went downstairs for lunch with some co-workers (50 steps across the office, 1 elevator, 10 steps to the pub, and 4 steps down…table!).  Just after the food was served I got a server message that one of my servers was about to crash.  A quick phone call or two and I realized I was going to have to go back up to my office.  The server problem actually resolved itself while I was walking back up (thanks to good MySQL configuration, thanks Wes!) but of course my lunch was cold by the time I got back down there at my gimpy pace.  No other excitement came along.

Evening

My hamstring was feeling more like it would spasm once I got home.  I just couldn’t find a comfortable position no matter what I tried.  Finally I broke down and took some ibuprofen.  Then massaged it some and tried to relax.  Evening PT went very well except for the hamstring which still wanted to spasm on me.  I was able to keep it at bay but just barely.  Tonight I did 4 Minutes of ‘shift’, 5 of passive extension, 30 each of front and side leg raises but only 25 of the stomach ones, due to hamstring; I came very close to muscle spasm part way through.  I rounded out PT with 20 heel slides and hamstring stretch.  I did not ice afterward because Kammy was too tired to go get the ice pack and I didn’t feel up to doing the stairs again.  Tomorrow it’s time for PT at Tria; I’ll be excited to see what progress I have made since last Thursday.

I Stayed up too late…really should have iced!

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Posted by Greg on July 14th, 2011 :: Filed under ACL Files
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