Medical Monday And My Trip To The Track

   The day before yesterday was yet again a Medical Monday and I got together for another physio session with Alison. 
   With each progressive visit, Alison has gotten me to the point where my "bad" knee is now my left one, as the right one (the one she's been working on) actually has been feeling pretty good and normal.
   Now, "normal", in my case, is an interesting term. My goal in acquiring a physiotherapist was so that my knee would end up feeling like it did before my injury last spring. Before the injury, I had the knees of a 64-year-old man who'd played sports his whole life and for about 40 of those years had been a goalie of one sort or another. Those are not necessarily good knees to have. At the same time, I was happy with them and what they could do. They still gave me grief fairly often but it was grief I could deal with.
   Alison, I think, would like me to have good knees and despite all the physiotherapy in the world I don't think I'm destined to have real good knees. All I want is for them to be an acceptable level of crappy! So this is what I'm aiming for.
   Alison and I do have one common goal, however, and that is to get me back on a track and running sprints. Where we're at now is me heading to a track and seeing just how fast I can run on my newly improved right knee.

The track at STA. I was the streak in lane 2!

   To this end, twice in the last two weeks I have headed to the nearby track at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School here in London to test things out. 
   The first time was a little problematic---as I got up to "speed" suddenly there was a sharp pain travelling down the outside of my right calf, not dissimilar to a shin splint. At this point, I shut her down. The second time, just this weekend, I managed to get travelling at about 85 per cent speed without having that same pain. This enabled me to sprint three or four more times but never full-out. I think there's a bit of a psychological block to really laying it all out on the line---more than likely the fear of blowing the knee right out. As unlikely as this is given the stress tests performed on it regularly in physio, I think I'm still giving in to the fear. 
   So, at this point, we've made a fair amount of progress and have cut back on the frequency of physio visits. My next visit is almost three weeks away and my task between now and then is to continue to do all the exercises I've been given and spend as much time as I can trying to run as fast as I can! 

The big bloc of missing numbers in the
middle is when I stopped doing leg and knee work

   At the same time that I've been attending physio in a faithful and regular manner, I've also done a pretty good job (for me) of hitting the gym on a pretty consistent basis. I started going back to Goodlife Fit4Less again just before Christmas and really didn't want to be one of those "resolution" gym-goers. I'm at the point now where I actually look forward to it. I carry around a little clipboard and chart with me (and manage to look pretty geeky) as I go from machine to machine, partly to track my progress and partly just to remember what weight I left off at on any given machine. So far, I've just about finished my first chart and it's pretty cool to look back and see the numbers slowly rising! One of the telling signs for my knee was the fact that I missed a whole bunch of sessions of knee work due to the pain but am now able to resume them more or less where I left off! Yeehaw!
   Finally, so you are totally up-to-date on this Medical Monday post, my little carcinoma surgery is now set for April 3. I'm quite happy for this to be happening as soon as it is, we're headed for New York City in June and my biggest fear was that surgery would rear its (my?) ugly head right in the middle of that. So, no fears! There, all caught up!