Month: April 2006

I’ll be honest, I was a little freaked out when my physical therapist asked me if I’ve ever had electrical stimulation. Today my physical therapist was John. After introducing himself, John left the room and came back with what looked like an iPod in his hand.

“Did Paul do this with you yesterday,” John asks.
“No, what is it?”
“It’s electrical stimulation. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt, most people say it feels good.”
“What does it do?”
“It uses an electrical current to cause a muscle to contract,” John says as he sticks electrodes to different parts of my leg.

After he finished placing the electrodes, John explained that soon I would feel the electrodes “grabbing” my muscles and to let him know if it was too strong. 30 seconds later I felt a tingling on my leg and John increased the wattage until I told him it was too much. He set the electrodes to pulse for 20 seconds, and rest for 10 seconds, and repeat.

“How does it feel,” John asks.
“Good. How long am I doing this for?”
“About 12-15 minutes.”

It felt pretty good, and I almost fell asleep. 15 minutes later John returned and disconnected me from the electrodes. We then did some hip strengthening, nothing too rigorous. After, John once again hooked up the electrodes, wrapped an ice pack around my leg, turned on the electrodes, and left. 15 minutes later Paul came in and disconnected the electrodes. Good times.

I’ve been to the YMCA down the street from my house twice, to vote. Yesterday I went to check out their gym. I’ve known about it for a few years, but never thought about joining. I’m starting to look around for a new gym to join. Not only is my old gym about a half miles walk from my apartment, the YMCA gym has an indoor track, pool, racquetball courts, basketball courts, and all the other regular gym stuff.

I had my first appointment with my outpatient physical therapist today at his office in Brookline. I asked him to give some approximate dates as to when I’ll be able to walk, and when I’ll be able to return to OCS. He guessed walking unassisted can take up to 8 more weeks while a full recovery will probably take between 8 to 12 months. Just in time for OCC 195!

He sounded excited to help get my leg back to it’s prior state, which was motivating. I’ll be spending a lot of time at his office, I have 3 appointments per week, and each appointment will last between 1 and 1.5 hours. I’m going back in tomorrow. Unfortunately, he recommended against my return to weight training. Looks like I’ll have to wait another 2-4 weeks before joining the YMCA.

It’s been five weeks since my surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital and I guess things are going as expected. Two weeks ago I switched from percocet to Tylenol, we realized I popped about 110 pills (out of 135) and I still needed to wean myself off. Since then things have been getting better with the leg. Either as a result of the injury or the surgery, I lost all muscle control in my right leg, other than my ankle and toes. Three weeks of physical therapy remedied that and I am now able to move the leg (with the obvious exception of my hip).

I had my first consult with my local orthopedic specialist here in Boston a week ago at Boston Medical Center. After about an hour and a half in the waiting room I was seen by Doctor C, who after glancing at my x-rays from Hanscom said I should come back in 4 weeks. I guess no news is good news, but I was hoping for something like, “it looks like your femur is healing and you probably won’t need a partial hip transplant.” Maybe that was too much to ask, if Doctor C knew that I assume he would have told me. My next appointment is in 3 weeks, which is 8 weeks after the surgery. I hope for some better news then.