Hey there, time to sound off again. I know I'm a day early but I really wanted to share!
Big news this
week! I’ve regained the use of my
knee!! This is beyond wonderful. A little over a year ago, right when we were
moving in here on our little farm, I did something to my knee while trying to
move furniture. I went to the doctor
after the swelling wouldn’t go down in a week or so and my range of motion was
actually getting worse. They sent me for
x-rays and an MRI which both showed up nothing.
I still believe I tore my meniscus, but since the MRI couldn’t see
anything due to all the fluid and swelling, they gave me some steroids, told me
to do squats, and sent me home.
Squats. With a busted knee. I suck at squats anyway, but when I couldn’t
even support the usual amount of weight on my knee without stabbing and intense
pains, how was I supposed to do squats?
When I told them I couldn’t do squats, they said to do lunges. These folks.
I swear. And before anyone
wonders why I didn’t try a different doctor to get some better advice, as a
Tricare Prime customer, I don’t get that option. The alternative would be Tricare Standard,
which would give me more flexibility to who I go see but wouldn’t cover as much
and costs almost as much, so there you go.
Government healthcare at its supposed finest, and we want to force everyone
to do this, because government.
Anyway, political and governmental snarks
aside, I felt pretty stuck. I couldn’t
use my knee. I couldn’t get help to use
my knee. We tried walking, but that
raised hell with my knee, hips, and back, because I’m just a bundle of fun
problems and the knee was exacerbating all the rest. Changing the sheets made me cry with the pain
in various body parts. Doing the laundry
or dishes had to be done in fits and starts, often with my husband and I tag
teaming the chore so neither of us was forced to do the whole thing. My little boy would beg me to hold him, and I
just couldn’t.
I was moody,
feisty, depressed, and downright miserable.
I just didn’t quite realize how miserable, because life is actually
really good. I didn’t feel like I had a
right to be miserable, but pain does that to a person. We tried short walks around the property to
recondition it, but that made everything hurt worse. We tried yoga once. Just once.
Five minutes in, after cow and cat and while the lady was telling us to
“relax back on our heels into child’s pose,” the pain reached a crescendo that
felt like ice, electricity, and something tearing all at once, and that was
just my knee. My hip felt like I had hot
wires down my sacroiliac, and my lower back felt like I was wearing a belt of
rusty nails. So yoga was out. Completely out.
A guy I used
to know was into Kung Fu. He told me
about Qigong. That was almost 10 years
ago, and it kind of just slipped my mind until now. I used to do martial arts with my dad, and my
husband trained with his dad, too, back when we were both in high school. We were from different schools of martial
arts with me being more heavily into Judo and grappling styles while my husband
was Yoshukai, but the idea of discipline and body control is pretty universal,
even if styles are different. The catas
were always something we both enjoyed, so Qigong came back into my mind.
That night,
against Pa’s better judgement because we were both in a state from the
morning’s yoga misadventure, I sweet talked him into trying the Eight Brocades
with me. Specifically, we did this video. At the very start, during the
warmup something in my knee made a weird movement, not quite a pop, not quite a
crunch, but something moved. After
completing the entirety of the Eight Brocades, I was sweating and out of
breath, despite how slow and gentle it is, but we both managed nearly all of it
with some modifications to allow for our strength and flexibility levels.
I was a bit
achy, but who wouldn’t be after basically three years of mostly
inactivity. Between pregnancy, surgery,
recovery, injury, recovery, injury, recovery, and a very sedentary job, I
haven’t been exactly the paragon of physical fitness over here. I figured I’d give it till the next morning
to see for sure how my knee responded.
The next
morning, I had full range of motion back in my knee. Read that again. Full.
Range. Of. Motion.
After over a year of not being able to bend it past 90 degrees and not
being able to straighten it fully, I had full range of motion back in my
knee. I could bear weight on it. I kept catching myself standing funny to
cater to my bad knee, and I would correct myself, stand up straight, do a
little dance of pure joy, and stand on both feet. My back, consequently, doesn’t hurt as back,
because it’s not cocked funny due to poor posture. Even my hip doesn’t hurt as bad, because I
don’t have excess pressure on one hip versus the other constantly. I was able to stand at the sink, do a whole
sink of dishes and do laundry without having to take a break.
Pa says his
back is unchanged, but that is still better than hurting worse like it did the
day after our yoga misadventure. We have
been doing Qigong every other day. I found a better video here that explains the moves and the breathing. We’re
hoping to move up to every day soon. I
still get out of breath and can’t do the meditative breathing properly, but
that will come. And in the meantime, I
CAN USE MY KNEE!!! Holy crap! My attitude is improved. My depression is gone. I have more patience with my husband and my
little boy. This is a huge deal for me,
and really for all of us. I am not a
super nice person when I am cranky, and I have been cranky for almost a solid
year.
Relief,
happiness, peace, joy, excitement, all the good words you can think of, apply
to me right now. I want to find more forms to do. In addition to the Eight Brocades, I've found the Five Elements and the Five Animals. I imagine there are more. I mean, it's a 5,000-year-old tradition. I imagine there are a few more than 18 forms, but I could be wrong. Maybe they refined and perfected and this is all that is needed. We're going to focus on the Brocades until we have them down in muscle memory, then move on to the Elements. The Animals are more complex and will require much more flexibility, strength, and focus. I'm excited. This may not be a weight-loss journey, but it will be a health-improving one, and that is more important, I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Talk to me!