Sliding Hearts

They wasted no time getting me back to physical therapy after my surgery. I was already doing things by the next day, which was tough. AGB had also given me some things to work on until I saw her again this morning. The two toughest things were trying to bend my knee and trying to lift my leg off the table. My knee is incredibly swollen, so I have virtually no range of motion at all. But that didn’t stop AGB from forcing me to do heel slides for ten minutes. She assures me that they’ll get easier the more that I do them, but all evidence is pointing to that contrary at the moment. I’m starting to wonder if she just enjoys torturing me.

The other issue was trying to lift my leg off the table. The act itself is incredibly painful, because it puts pressure directly where the doctor took the tendon out of my thigh, which feels like someone is stabbing me in the leg with a knife. The other problem is that I seem to have lost all muscle strength in my thigh overnight. I can’t actually make my muscles flex and lift like I used to. AGB assures me that this too will get easier with time, especially as my thigh tendon continues to heal and the pain lessens.

UPDATE: It pains me to write this next part, but after a week of doing heel slides every day, they have, in fact, gotten easier…as AGB said they would. I reluctantly admitted this to her, hoping that the news wouldn’t give her a big head. To her credit, she did her best to turn away to hide the giant smile spread across her face, but I still saw it. At least she didn’t say, “I told you so.” Instead, she sweetly said, “I’m glad that you’re making progress.” I appreciated that she let me hold onto a sliver of dignity, but we both knew that was just code for “I told you so.”