ALLISON MANN

Well, as of Monday 8/6 I’ll be 3 weeks out from my hamstring tendon tear surgery.  I realize it’s jumping around quite a bit, but Saturday 8/4 I went to the pool to “walk” around the shallow end, as the doctor I saw earlier in the week said it was okay to do.  I had a bunch of tightness where the 3 main hamstring tendons had been re-attached to my ischium.  It didn’t help, I’m sure, that I had also once again tried to back off the Ibuprofen regimen.  Due to the swelling on Saturday morning before my pool walk I got back started on it, and I’ve been icing 3x day.

In any case…

I tore all 3 of those colored muscles from my ischium/ischial tuberosity, as you can see in this image:

The ischial tuberosity is the slight white bone just off the Cocsyx where the 3 hamstring tendons attach.  It is, quite literally, the sitz bone.  No wonder it’s uncomfortable to sit on anything.

So, I haven’t been writing at all.  To be honest, I’ve been apathetic and fairly down in the dumps.  I think it’s partially being alone this past week (after 2 weeks of hanging with mom and having constant company), plus my 15 day follow-up appointment not really yielding anything new.

Back to chronology…

A week and a half ago mom and I had lunch at Tommy Bahama’s before running a few errands

I was pretty wrecked, so I took a nap

But, I rallied and we went out to an Italian dinner, with crutches as my date

After just over a week and a half I decided to try the 110% recovery compression shorts to help with my swelling

Last dinner at mom’s my sister came out to take me home the next morning and mom made my favorite childhood dinner of taco/burritos

I got home Saturday and hung out with Justin off and on while he took up carpet cleaning in our living room, and then we headed to a 50th Birthday party for a family friend. I spent more time standing and crutching around than I had the few days prior, and after a busy Wednesday/Thursday was feeling it, so also spent some time lounging on the couch. But, we got outside to eat and since it was warm and sunny Justin was a good umbrella boy and moved the umbrella off another (unused) table to keep me in the shade!

We also met up with Jeff and Rene at Stone, where I got to partake in probably my 2 favorite beers

Assuming the position at home, propped up on the couch

Since I wasn’t doing much of anything, feeling utterly useless, and Justin being so overwhelmed, I asked the doctor if I could do dishes. He said it’d be fine. Yay, not so useless.

Multi-tasking: G-talk, Ride the Divide, and Olympics

Eventually I settled on Ride the Divide

The doctor had also said I could walk around the shallow end of a pool, since there’s no real gravity in the water. I still can’t do any weight-bearing on dry land, but he’d said the pool was okay on Tuesday, as long as I wasn’t swimming or playing volleyball. I waited all week, the one thing I’d been looking forward to all week, and finally Saturday after breakfast and some Olympics coverage I used the SmartCRUTCHes to walk down to the pool and “hop” (actually, I hung to the rail for dear life as I slowly maneuvered my way down to the pool bottom since I can’t “step” up or down as I’d have to fully weight my left leg, which I can’t do)

It felt SO WEIRD to walk around. I hung on to Justin as we made our up and down the shallow end of the pool until I was tired. It felt really weird. It wasn’t painful, but I could feel the surgical site (I am guessing) with some slight pressure at the ischial tuberosity where the tendons are sutured on. We stopped near the stairs for a bit and tried to figure out a way that I could work on extending my knee range of motion (I can’t really extend it fully right now, more due to disuse than anything else, it just won’t go straight, so that’ll be “fun” in PT!), but my left foot as soon as it left the pool bottom would start to float up and out and I didn’t feel like I could control it to pull it back, so I nixed that idea, and then it was time for the long tough climb out of the pool.

It was probably more weird getting out of the pool than it had been walking around in it. The pressure near the ischium just kept gathering the further out of the pool I climbed, and I decided to take it easy and lay on a chaise lounge for a few minutes to dry off and rest before the walk back home. It was so uncomfortable on the chair, though, that I didn’t last long!

Had a blast hanging out on Saturday with friends and some family.

I had Justin bring me the 8lbs weight we had sitting by the TV to put on the couch. I figured if it wasn’t sitting here I would never use it. So, now it stares me down.

I actually used it this morning. 10 reps of bicep curls each arm, 10 reps of overhead press each arm, and 8 reps of tricep extensions on each arm.

Any other suggestions on seated couch upper body weight exercises I can do? I don’t think I can do anything with my core since I can’t use my hamstring or use my left leg to hold me up. My knee has to be bent at least a bit basically all the time. But, at least it was something.

Aside from that… the doctor really didn’t have much to say on Tuesday when I was there. From what I can recall at this point it was just basically – keep not hurting yourself. Odd that he wasn’t all that confident/comfortable with me driving, but thought I was working. How would I get there? I can barely sit at a table for 30-45 minutes, so I can’t imagine how I’d manage sitting at a desk all day at this point. Not to mention that working for a large company everything is pretty far away from my desk, and doors continue to present a problem for me trying to open them with my hands on crutches or a walker and trying to get in and out.

But, tomorrow will mark 3 weeks. I know I’ve come along way from Day 1, but I’ve still got a big uphill battle to go. Hoping that I’m turning a corner with the low motivation and bad mood, but something tells me that’s an uphill struggle as well.

I have no info on PT or when I’ll be off crutches. I go back for another follow-up in about a week and a half. I’m not confident there will be much more info at that point, but I’ll be 4 weeks and 1 day out, so we’ll see.

Until next time.