Time Since Surgery: 6 months!!! (26 weeks to be exact, so more like 6.5 months, but my surgery was on May 1st)
Physical Therapy: I'm all finished with going to physical therapy except for 1 check up appointment in a month to make sure things are going well. I had my last session last week! I still have a home therapy regimen involving lots of exercises including the stationary bike and elliptical, lunges, squats, 1 leg bridges with kick outs, hip abductions with external rotation, hip adductions, romanian dead-lifts, ab twists, bicycle abs, planks, side planks (apparently strengthening your core helps your knees? so my PT added lots of core stuff), leg kicks with theraband, clamshells with theraband, and stairs.
Activities That Are Improving: speed-walking, going up and down stairs, getting up and down from the ground, standing for long periods of time, sitting cross-legged
Activities That Are Challenging: kneeling, deep squats, kneeling while sitting on my feet (I'm about 3 degrees away from full ROM now, so I can't quite sit on my feet yet)
Now it's been 9 months since my surgery!
Time Since Surgery: 39.5 weeks
Physical Therapy: Pretty much none, although I should still be doing PT 3-4 times a week. I'm lucky if I do my home PT once a week though. I'm so exhausted after being on my feet all day at work that I typically plop down on the couch and don't move after work, and weekends have been super busy with traveling and wedding planning. I know I just need to make time for my PT though because it really does seem to help my knees.
Activities That Are Improving: working, cleaning, sitting cross legged, getting up and down from the ground, picking up patients at work, shopping
Activities That Are Challenging: stairs are still tough, hiking, yoga, jumping, deep squats, kneeling
A lot has happened in the past three months. I started working full time, and I'm loving it! The kids are incredible. I'm primarily working in infant feeding and on the oncology floor. I honestly can't believe how it all worked out after having my knee surgery. My dream has been to do infant feeding occupational therapy, and it just amazes me every day how it worked out that that's the area I'm in now.
Work is amazing, but it's also pretty exhausting. To go from sitting on a couch all summer and recovering to a month of part time and then full time has completely worn me out. I haven't taken this many couch naps since I had mono! My knees are pretty achy by the end of the day, but up until this past weekend it's been manageable. Something happened this past weekend and the left one is really sore again and it's sometimes difficult to walk on, so I'm getting that checked out next week at my surgeon's. I'm not sure what I did. I think it was either too many stairs, yoga with one of my patients, or helping one of my patients lift weights. Not sure, but it's not fun to feel like this again! I'm hoping it's something that quickly heals itself.
On a completely different note...Kevin and I got engaged!! He proposed on December 20th, and it was absolutely perfect :) The short version is that we went to dinner at our favorite restaurant, drove around to all of the places in Columbus that are meaningful to us, then came back to our apartment. He took my hand and led me out to our balcony which was covered with Christmas lights (and it was the one, oddly warm December evening during the one hour that it decided to stop raining). He gave a short-yet-very-sweet speech, got down on one knee, and popped the question! We were both beyond excited, and I couldn't stop saying "We're engaged! Oh-my-gosh we're engaged!"
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| On the balcony, a few minutes after Kevin popped the question |
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| By our tree in our apartment the night we got engaged |
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| He did a wonderful job :) |
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| My parents got engaged in December 32 (ish) years ago, so we took a picture with the picture from their engagement, then re-created it. |
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| Re-creating the picture from the night my parents got engaged. My parents' picture was at my mom's parent's house, and our was at my mom and dad's house. |
The date is set for September 20th!! We've gotten a good start on the planning, but we have quite a bit to do still. We're starting a wedding blog, too (I know..I can't even keep up with this one and now I'm adding a second one).
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| Kevin's cousin Stephanie and her fiance Dan got married! |
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| I wore this to work on Halloween. One of the many benefits of working at a Children's hospital. |
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| We (mostly Kevin) cut down our Christmas tree |
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| My feeble attempt at cutting our tree down. It lasted approximately one minute, give or take 52 seconds. Upper body strength is not my forte, and kneeling is still tough on my knees. |
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| Upper body strength is apparently Kevin's thing. |
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| Our first tree! |
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| A glimpse at the gloriousness that was the 7th Annual Votino Christmas Party. Jessica with one of the most beloved white elephant gifts of the year. |
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| Kevin and I went to Gatlinburg with the Anderson's for Larry's big 5-0 and to celebrate Christmas with the Andersons. It was a blast! |
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| We celebrated New Years at the other Anderson household (Jay & Ashley). It was tons of fun, and it was the first New Years Kevin & I had together where one of us wasn't sick. It was also the first New Years I've had in almost 10 years that something bad didn't happen. Hooray!! |
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| Happy New Year! |
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| This little munchkin turned two. Happy Birthday, Eevee! |
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| This dude hinted that he wanted some cousins soon by choosing this book for Aunt Maria to read. |
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| And these two cutie patooties stayed as adorable as ever, bringing me endless amounts of joy. |
