"What Are You Doing This Weekend?"

Would you believe I was asked that question 3 times on Friday?

Given my little "situation," I found that humorous. I guess some people were giving me more credit than I expected...

My focus this weekend was going to be on continuing my exercises. Period. End of story. That's it.

I wanted to be very productive with my time. In fact, I wasn't going to take the weekend off just because it was there...

As of Friday, I've been in Physical Therapy for one week. When I arrived, Kendra got me on a table and I started doing my stretches.

They had someone "observing," so she asked me a lot of questions ("What happened? Were you active before the accident? How much has your life changed?"). This girl was a student at the University of North Texas and was deciding if she wanted to go into therapy.

Oddly enough, after one of my exercises, my knee started bleeding. It was coming out of the left side of the knee - the area where the lateral release was. Kendra asked me if that ever happened before, and I said no. It's still very swollen, so the skin is just very tight around that incision.

I finished up on the bike (2o minutes and I got my cadence/rpm up to 55!), then left. I needed to go to the grocery store, and I wasn't looking forward to it (I was very sore). But, as soon as that task would be over, I could get home and rest on the couch.

Friday afternoon I did one therapy session, then ended up grabbing a nap. I think everything was catching up to me on the week. I was very sore and tired.

I spent Saturday working my tail off on the exercises, and I was able to ride the bike 3 times at 20 minutes each. It gets pretty boring riding the bike - so I play "Tetris" on my iPhone while I'm on it. Ha!

When I wasn't exercising, I was smoking... meats! I smoked two chickens and two racks of ribs. They turned out great - I'll give one of each to my folks. If you know anything about smoking, it takes 3-4 hours for each session.

Sunday was a mirror of Saturday without the smoking. However, I was pretty tired from Saturday's exercises so I only did two therapy sessions.

To me, I believe all of this hard work is starting to pay off. While I am much more comfortable when I'm on the couch, the knee isn't hurting as much when I walk on it. It's still big... but I think I'm starting to develop the muscle mass to support everything.

I have been thinking about this a lot - not going through therapy before, I don't think I had the strength to support myself (or as much strength as I have on my right leg). Thus, the traumatized knee was probably taking all of that weight...

At least that's what my "couch potato" thought process came up with...

This week I start back to work (Wednesday). I plan to work from home Wednesday and Thursday, then go into the office on Friday. My therapy sessions this week are Monday/Wednesday/Thursday.

Oh, and Tuesday I go see Dr. Ramsey. I'm interested to see what progress he thinks I've made in the last two weeks.

So if you're wondering, "What does Regan do all day?" - the answer is "exercise!" It takes me about an hour and a half now to get through a session. Once I'm through, I take about an hour break and then I get into it again.

That's my plan this week... at least Monday and Tuesday. When work starts up, I'll lose that time... Which is why I'm pushing so hard right now to take advantage of what I have while I'm at home.