Grounded, part deux

So, where was I?

Oh – that’s right – able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

Life over the past couple of weeks has been a blur of swimming with a pull buoy (wouldn’t want to have my legs kicking or anything!), doing upper body strength training and physical therapy.  Lots of physical therapy.  Three times a week at almost 2 hours a session, in fact.

When I went into the PT place on the first day for my evaluation, it was funny – because my other, non-hurting ankle was swollen (softball injury from earlier in the season… we’ll call this “Good Ankle”), they thought that was the one they were working on.  Uh, no.  Yea – see that other ankle that looks perfectly fine?  Yea, that’s the one I can’t put weight on first thing in the morning (“Baaaad Ankle!”).  After a half dozen quizzical looks and a game of 20 questions (Good Ankle measured out worse than Baaaad Ankle! in terms of strength and range of motion… huh…), they finally believed me. Mostly because they had to, because I kept insisting I knew what I was talking about.

PT turned out to be this funhouse of poking and prodding and electrical do-dads being hooked up to me, along with more exercises than one person could keep track of without the aid of a large computer, practically.  It was like a time warp – every time I walked in there, masked behind their good humor and funny stories, they managed to keep piling on more things to do until I almost felt like they should assign me a permanent table since I was there so long.

But – it was all for my own good, right?  All in the name of getting me back on the road.  So, I was on board.  I put in my time, did my home exercises and worked my way back to perfect health.  Easy as pie (though, really, unless you’re “baking” at Baker’s Square, pie really isn’t so easy, now, is it?).  I routinely informed my physical therapists of my rather modest expectations:  “just a miracle, please.  That’s all.”  One told me that all it took was wishing hard and little bit of pixie dust… so, I figured I was good to go (they told me they just got a new supply of “the dust” in)!

In the meantime, I was a really good girl.  Honest, I was!  Even though my PT didn’t believe me, I didn’t run at all, didn’t hop on my bike, didn’t do ANYTHING (well, except become a world-class snacker… I do have me some mad bad-food snacking skillz).  Really, with the exception of a 5-hour weed wrestling session (don’t even ask…), I gave my ankle the rest the doctor said it needed.

And the ankle?  It felt better for the resting.  Really it did.  Of course the rest of me suffered… this is – by far – the longest I’ve gone without running in about 6 years.  And, really, who knew how critical it was at keeping me from becoming a raving lunatic?  Go figure.

Fast forward:  it’s time for me to see the doctor again.

I knew my fate was in my own hands.  In truth, they weren’t going to x-ray me, or get another MRI and the whole enchilada was going to based on how I said I was doing.  I started out with “It’s a miracle!  I’m healed!” … unbelievably, that was received rather skeptically (I need an acting class, apparently).  So, I figured I might as well go with the truth (quite a concept, I know):  it’s feeling much better, but since I haven’t been allowed to run, I can’t really tell you how it’s feeling.

And with that (and a few more probing questions where she tried to figure out if I was lying to her), I was released back into the wild and told to return to my normal life.

Now perhaps I can cancel the APB put out to search for my sanity…