I can hardly believe it but today marks 11 months since my PCL knee surgery. This time last year I was still struggling on with a huge Robocop brace thinking my surgery would be in the November but mercifully it was brought forward. To anyone debating whether or not to have the surgery, it’s so difficult to advise but I’m personally very pleased I went through with it. It’s a long healing process which could take years but I definitely feel better and stronger since before the operation when I couldn’t do anything physical at all.
My scars are hardly noticeable apart from the deep incision on my thigh – you can see it on this picture. It’s not too bad and looks like a bruise really. Sometimes I cover it with make up if I’m wearing a shorter skirt!
At the moment I’m doing almost everything I did before, with the obvious exception of skiing! The dancing for the Paralympic Opening Ceremony isn’t taxing at all really, the only problem is crouching down but I’m managing to cheat this move slightly. The other show I’m dancing in is far more hectic and fast paced. I’m coping fine with it though so far. We did try a lift where I had to be thrown into a leap landing on my bad leg and that didn’t work out too well but I can adapt it. Most of the time I don’t even think about my knee, I just love dancing and I’m getting on with it.
As for running, well that’s tougher. I’m still only managing 20/25 minutes at a time and feel very unfit. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to run like I used to but I hope if I keep working at it my fitness will come back. I went out jogging last night and my knee is a bit tender today but, right now, I’m happy that I can run at all. My good leg is aching more than my bad which makes me think I’m still protecting my injury and not distributing the pressure evenly although I try very hard with this. I’m still swimming and that’s all going well.
I’m not doing any physio which is really bad I know. Following my last physio session, the main objective was to build up my quad muscles to help support the knee and, with all this exercise, I can only hope I’m doing that. But I seriously can’t do any more squats! 80 squats a day for months and months became way too tedious. But I should book in for a physio session soon to make sure all is well.
Not much else to report at the moment but hopefully a year post surgery will allow for a bit more progress!
