And ten days fly by…

I’ve been working really, really, hard in physical therapy and with my exercises at home. And it’s paying off. I saw my surgeon’s assistant on the 21st, and she removed the dressing on the incision and swapped it out for Steri-strips. She showed me the x-rays they’d taken of my new knee so that I could see what it looks like now. Absolutely fascinating. I won’t post the photo here; no like gross anybody out. But you know, no wonder it hurts…there’s a bunch of metal in there! Best of all, she said I could hemo the compression hose!!! I was so happy!! They were were a pain in the ʻōkole! Oh yeah… and she confirmed that there’s such a thing as surgery brain. I could tell that all my cylinders weren’t firing quite right. It’s ‘way better now, though. Megan told me that she was really pleased with my progress; she’d wanted at least a 90° angle on my bent knee, and my PT told me the day before it was 115°!

I managed to walk across the skybridge with my walker pau my appointment. It’s amazing how something small kine like that can tire me out. We came home and I still had to exercise, too.

So since then, more PT twice a week. Patrick adds new exercises every time I go in there, and some of them hurt like crazy, but I do ’em. He’s not torturing me, but he certainly does challenge me! Last week he got me started on the bike; my bad left knee won’t go all the way around, but my new did actually did. Surprised the heck out of both of us.

I was doing well enough to be able to go to Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. It was supposed to rain, but it didn’t! I had to use a wheelchair, though; it was Nolemana’s first time as a wheelchair driver. He did great. But I couldn’t go out onto the lawn area…’way too bumpy there. But at least I got to go, and some of us local members of the My Knitting Has Cat Hair In It group on Ravelry had a wonderful meet-up.

There are always interesting/fascinating outfits at OFFF, like this hat, for instance.

And this ginormous hat:

Everyone was in such a good mood, and I loved the atmosphere all around me.

Nolemana and I went back the next day to get a part for my electric spinner, so I took more photos. I didn’t get any from the buildings the day before because it was just too crowded.

This cute Shetland sheep was going for a walk.

I was getting tired, so we decided to make a quick trip out to Swan Island Dahlias on the way home. This is a yearly stop for us, too, and I’m so glad we decided to head over there. The dahlias were absolutely amazing.

We took more photos from the road on our way out.

I snapped a photo of this ’52 Chevy; my brother and I love these classic cars. Our dad used to have a ’50 Chevy kinda like this one.

And yippee! We saw a train, too, alongside the Willamette River.

Yesterday at PT, Patrick graduated me to using a cane part-time, and said I could go to the gym and use the Nu-Step machine for 5-7 minutes. I did 7. I was greeted by my gym posse brothers, who I surprised by being there. They all came over and gave me a huge welcome…one of them spotted me across the room and they all came hurrying over, like this wonderful wave. Five of them. I was so happy to see them, along with Janice, my exercise buddy.

By the time I got home, I was beat and my knee hurt. I still had more exercises to do, so I did those and then iced my knee big time.

It’s been a very busy ten days; some days are worse than others, and some nights my knee hurts bad. Like where they drilled the puka in my bones for R2D2 support. Mostly I can see that I’m making progress, though, even with a few hiccups here and there. The weather has been gorgeous, and I love getting out and seeing the Fall colors.

K’den. Mahalo for riding along this journey with me.