Continuing on the theme of compiling and writing out my emailed ACL recovery updates…

ACL emails: Week 4

The stress keeps building… But thankfully we’ve got a lot of stuff to be working on, which is keeping us semi-sane and active.

This week was more Physical Therapy appointments and more fighting with Tufts – both came out with pretty good results. I’m still on crutches, and will be for the forseeable future, but my gait isn’t deteriorating too much, and my mobility is coming back up. I don’t have full active extension anymore, but I do have passive extension – which means that the joint itself is fine, it’s just that the muscles are being inhibited by the swelling. Which just means I need to work on reducing the swelling.

With insurance, I finally got in touch with the appeals department (after filing a greivance against our contact there… after filing it, she called me within a day! Funny how that works…). It’s not looking good, but it’s at least moving again.

On the surgery note; I’ve started getting quotes, and it’s not as bad as we expected. It’s still expensive, but not outside the realm of possibility. And the better doctor is actually much cheaper, so that gives better reason to go into Portland, instead of staying in Hood River.

On Hood River note – we’re hitting the gym pretty regularly! My upper body is getting the best workout, and I’ve started doing cardio on some arm-bike machines. I’m actually writing this email from 16,600 ft elevation (it’s equivalent) in an altitude room in Portland, which is giving me some pretty sweet cardio gains.

ACL emails: Week 5

I’m feeling good! I’m walking a lot better, and while I did have one day of some pretty bad pain (I think it was a big storm front coming in), I’ve been feeling a lot better over all.

Mobility is still a bit weak, but I’m more confident and walking (with crutches, of course) is getting more and more smooth. I’ve still got extension, and my flexion is slowly returning. I can’t really bend it all the way back still, but supposedly that’s a much easier movement to recover, unlike extension.

Things are going slowly… but hey. They’re going.