the sound of my knees
Today is the four monthiversary of my knee surgery!
Tonight I plan to bend and stretch my knees to celebrate this happy occasion.
Actually, that’s not true.
I do plan to celebrate by walking and ellipticalling for the third time in my recovery. Super exciting to be on the elliptical machine instead of the stationary bicycle. The bike is nice, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t build up the same kind of sweat. And the bikes are always available. It’s mostly people who don’t really want to work hard on the bikes, or those of us recovering from knee surgery. I’ve noticed a lot of other people read magazines on the bikes.
I can’t. I listen to music and watch the televisions, even though at the great distance from the bikes I can’t read the teletype. It’s hard to make up good stories about the meat that’s being cut up on the always on cooking shows. I’m vegetarian. Yesterday Forrest Gump was on the History channel and a lot of us at the gym did extra cardio. (The ellipticals and treadmills are close to the screens.)
Right, so I’m doing my elliptical thing and sweating and reading/watching Forrest Gump and then I do my leg press and extension and hear this very funny clicking sound in my recovering knee. I should say that while it is my left knee that was busted and repaired and is the one I mean when I say recovering, sometimes my right knee is recovering as well. It does a lot of extra hauling right now and sometimes makes this crunching sound. It’s because it’s swollen from doing the extra work. So then I try to rest it and work the other one faster. Basically, the sooner I build enough muscle in the left leg the sooner the right doesn’t have the extra work to do. It is challenging to rest one and work the one with lesser strength. It makes for not climbing stairs and for slow movement.
Two weeks ago that I took a Groove class. My studio, HUB 14, is running a series of classes and workshops this season, and Claudia Fancello from Montreal was teaching Groove class. It was a great workout, we were still dancing and it’s a crazy fun way to start the day. We’d warm up doing step taps and gradually steed them up until we were going as fast as the music. I have moved only slowly and very slowly since July. Suddenly is hard enough, but suddenly we were meant to be moving fast!
Back to the clicking. It’s hard to know if it’s the good ligaments settling into their spots kind of clicking or the kind that is pulling the ligaments out of the bone with their bolts. I didn’t have the feeling that it was the bolts coming out of my bones. I feel like I’d feel that more somehow, but like maybe it was the lower leg moving forwards and backwards within the joint. My understanding is that the new ligament protects this. If you don’t know what I mean, I’ll explain. Say you are pushing a futon and its frame away from you. You stand with the front of your feet under the edge of the futon and you just lean your shins into it. It moves. If you don’t have your ACL as I found out this summer when I was feeling strong between injury and surgery and you attempt this, you’ll feel your lower leg, shins, stay against the futon while from your knee up, your leg moves forward in space. A decidedly wrong feeling.
Anyhow, that is the danger of the leg extension: you gotta be sure you’re strong enough to move it and to not be moved by it.
As always, your post is insightful as well as delightfully written – thanks. Keep up the high-quality work I love your site!