This afternoon I had my second physical therapy appointment to rehab my recently repaired knee (I tore my ACL, had surgery). Today they added new exercises–heel raises, balancing on one foot, one-leg presses, and this thing where I sit in a rolly chair, dig my heels into the carpet, and pull myself around the room. Talk about feeling conspicuous. That being said, pretty much everyone in the room today was gimped up in one way or another. One lady was doing leg exercises like I was, another was doing shoulder work, and another was working on her elbow. Hell, even one of the staff members had his leg in a boot and was walking with a cane. I thought, THESE are my people.

For forty minutes I stretched, lifted, and flexed my left leg. The hardest thing was practicing going DOWN stairs, since apparently you bend your knee twice as much going down stairs as you do when you go up them. Anyway, I broke a sweat. But then they wrapped my leg in an ice blanket, and I quickly cooled off. Especially since the machine sprung a leak and squirted water all over my leg and all down my sock. That felt good.

After physical therapy, I came home and took a nap. Seriously, I don’t have a lot of energy and can’t seem to get enough rest. Probably because my leg keeps waking me up at night. I keep telling myself this is normal, that the doctor took a drill bit long enough to tunnel through a stack of two-by-fours and ran it through my leg, so it should be achy, tired, and pissed off. Still, I have a hard time slowing down and giving my body what it’s asking for (rest). For one thing, I’m used to being active. For another, I’m supposed to be doing rehab exercises two or three times a day at home or the gym, and I can’t exactly do those while I’m sleeping.

To be clear, the rehab exercises aren’t so much difficult as they are time-consuming. Originally there were nine exercises, and now I think I’m up to twelve or fifteen, depending on whether I’m at home or at the gym. Again, that’s three times a day. As my mom says, getting better has become a full-time job. Still, it’s paying off. Today my physical therapist seemed impressed with my ability to balance on one leg and said I was actually “ahead of the curve.” So that’s something.

Lately–over the last year–I’ve been trying to lower my standards. What I mean is that I’m used to a certain level of energy and activity, and my body simply hasn’t been consistently capable of that for a while now. So I’m trying to listen to it. My therapist says something big happens whenever you can really give into the universe and say, “Fine, damn it. I’m not in charge here. I’m on your time schedule.” What that big thing is, I don’t know. Probably inner peace or some shit like that. But again, I’m trying, to be okay with how things are right here, right now, to let sleeping as much as possible and doing my rehab exercises be my life for a while.

Okay, I’m off to the gym.

And then to bed.