Happy Passover and hope everyone had a nice Easter!
So…apparently I’m turning into the Incredible Hulk or Hulk Hogan. Upon taking off my PJ shirt this morning, I noticed that the seam by my shoulder and armpit had ripped…on both sleeves. GREAT. This is the problem I tend to have now, my shirts are too small for me, particularly in the arm or shoulder area. This is not cool. Yes, yes…I know it’s b/c my upper body is jacked now from constantly using it and it’s all muscle…blah, blah, blah. Knowing why, doesn’t make it suck any less. Not being able to fit into my clothing, which I happen to like, is just not cool. It would be one thing if all I wore prior to the accident were sweats and now I had to get bigger sweats, but that’s not the case..I’m not at the point of needing to buy an entire new wardrobe just yet, but it may have to come to that point, at some point. In addition to needing to eventually figuring out what pants will “look nice” over my prosthetics (when I stop shrinking/changing in size), I’ll also need to figure what now works with my new upper body frame. So, I need to figure what will fit and look nice over my line-backer shoulders and arms, my half real/half prosthetic left leg, and my prosthetic right leg. Yup. Well…at least I have spring and summer coming up. Warmer weather is easier to dress for…dresses, tank-tops (no sleeves means no ripping), shorts, etc…#Thesearmsaretoobig How do I go back to being petite?…Being half the size b/c I no longer have my legs doesn’t count…
It’s been just over 2 weeks since the surgery and except for a couple of bumps in the road, healing has been going OK. The hives are all gone and I’m not scratching myself like a flea infested dog anymore. I still get a random itch and there, which gets me a little freaked out, but I think I’m clear of the hives. All of my incision sites are starting to scab up, which is a good sign of healing. I’m still a little swollen in certain areas of my leg, but the swelling has definitely gone done a lot over the past couple of weeks. Once all the scabs clear and the swelling goes down some more, that will probably be the time I’ll need to start kicking it into high gear at therapy. Excited to get “back on my feet” again but not looking forward to the torturous workouts…
So, currently, I’m only wearing my right prosthetic. Seems odd to just wear my right prosthetic, right? My prosthetist doesn’t want me losing my shape or size so I wear it even though I can’t walk with just having the one on. But…I do walk with just the one on when I’m at therapy. I do this walk/hop thing in the parallel bars or with a pair of forearm crutches when I’m outside of the parallel bars (with someone standing behind me and holding my waist as I go…otherwise I’d fall on my face..). It’s freaking hard. It’s not so much the walking/hopping, as it is the trying to regain my balance and then use all of my upper body strength and my right side to stay balanced after taking a step. When I have both prosthetics on, it takes me, if I remember correctly, about 5 times more energy than an able-bodied person, to just walk…just walk. So with just the one, it felt like it took 20 times more energy… Obviously, when I had my legs it didn’t take me any energy to walk, because I didn’t think about it, I just did it. So is 5 times more energy accurate?…who knows…I’m been doing stretching exercises at home as well, exercises given to me by my prosthetist, that I’m supposed to do 10,000 times a day! I’ve been doing them. Also painful – but the good kind…sort of. It’s still early, so I can’t quite tell just yet, but I think I’ve started to get a little bit more bend out of it. It’s hard to tell. It’s all very strange.
I have a post-op follow-up with my orthopedist this Friday. I’ll see how that goes…I’ll have to apologize to him for my “nerdy” behavior when he came to see me in recovery, after the operation. Apparently, in my post-op, loopy state, I told him he did a good job and high-fived him. Wow. 12 surgeries under by belt prior to this one, all sedated, and this was my first time experiencing a “high” upon waking up from the anesthesia. Much nicer to wake up happy and loopy then groggy and exhausted.
That’s all for now…until next time.
As always, thanks for reading and keeping up with the goings on of me…