Nine months post op ACL reconstruction yesterday! I had my nine month post op visit with the physician assistant on Monday. He wants me to try something new, something I was not expecting at all.
It's no doubt I've been hyper-focused on my knee. Reading about it, reading journal articles, searching for others like me online, doing exercises everyday, trying to advance to single leg exercises (I have major atrophy still). It's on my brain every waking moment. Maybe, just maybe, thinking about it too much is getting me stuck or contributing to lingering pain? Luckily, I came across articles over the weekend that supported this idea that constant (sometimes negative) ruminating can be a hurdle to recovery or exasperate pain. I read some articles on chronic pain and pain catastrophizing that really rang true. So this was quite handy that I already was mentally prepping myself for this topic, and low and behold my surgical team wants me to try this! For the next 6 weeks, this is what I am to try with the goal of taking focus off of the knee:
He made the analogy of women who have trouble getting pregnant can only think about getting pregnant. The family will choose adoption, life is all great, then bam! they get pregnant (this was his analogy, obviously this doesn't happen in every case). So maybe the stress of getting better is having something to do with the pain, or having it on my brain all the time, like I am modifying my central nervous system. So combine this with my positive thinking post to change my overall attitude, I'm ready to try something new. I'll report back before Christmas to talk about how the experiment went. (Blogging will be halted for 6 weeks as well.) The very next day after my post op visit, I went up one of my go-to canyons, a canyon I would frequent during the week because it was so close to home. Felt awesome to be up here. 299 days since my last visit!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorA 45 year old active female who tore her ACL in January 2017 (at the age of 40). Reconstructive surgery in February 2017 with bone-patellar tendon-bone autograft. Archives
November 2022
|