My surgeon has officially confirmed that I am behind where I need to be for recovery. My knee is just not bending enough. MNB came to the appointment with me, and we talked about how to get my knee bending more. It may take a village to raise a child, but it only takes two people to work on my knee.
Thus, when I got home from rehearsal, my roommate and boyfriend were waiting for me. I got comfortable face down on the floor and they took turns bending my knee for me. We only did 2 cycles of 5 bends, but it took 30 minutes. Basically, they bend my knee, and then I have to push as hard as I can trying to straighten my leg for 30 seconds to fatigue the quads. As soon as I stop pushing, they push my knee into a deeper bend for 30 seconds. Then I'm supposed to try to push again from there for 30 seconds, followed by an even deeper stretch for 30 seconds. I don't think it's easy on either of them to do it, as the stretching makes me scream, sob and beg for them to stop. Halfway through the first round, I felt my face go numb and realized I was perilously close to passing out. My roommate brought out a damp washcloth for my neck, but as soon as I was recovered from that, the stretching began again.
I'm eternally grateful that I have both of them there to help me. There's just no way I could do this on my own. If I don't succeed in getting 30 more degrees of flexibility in the next 3 weeks, my surgeon is talking about having to put me under general anesthesia and forcibly restoring my flexibility. That does not sound like a good thing.
I'd love to be able to do a big reveal. I would start off with some before pictures of my bathroom, and then hit you right in the face with dazzling after pictures. Just like one of those home improvement shows! After all, that was the plan for the summer. I even had a name for the project. Down To The Studs 2010: A Bathroom Odyssey.
But then my knee happened, and my bathroom plans got scuttled. And before they got scuttled, I kind of started a little demolition. As you may recall, we had to get a broken cast iron pipe repaired, which involved moving the sink, and we ripped out quite a bit of the wall for good measure. After my injury, the sink never got hooked back up and the black plastic stayed on the wall.
When MNB came back two weeks ago, he decided to go ahead and hook up the new sink which had been sitting in my garage for three months. (We had to cut and move the new pipe up to hook up the sink, so I didn't want to hook up the old sink and possibly have to cut and move again for the new sink.)
So my bathroom still has black plastic covering half the walls, and there's some ugly exposed floorboard where the vinyl stopped for the old sink, but at least one part of the bathroom renovation is done!
It's a lovely portent of things to come. Next summer...
This was the only sink that was shallow enough to work with the awkward bump-out for pipes in my bathroom. Fortunately, I quite like it.
I considered three different faucets. It seems like a silly thing to debate, but I plan on living in this house for a while, and I didn't want to look at my faucet every morning and regret cheaping out on it. In the end, I actually chose the most expensive one, and I love it.
As a bonus, I put the old sink on Craigslist and managed to sell it for $50.
On an unrelated note, I told MNB I was going to have dinner with Tom on Monday. He didn't say anything until I mentioned watching a movie, too. Is my new boyfriend jealous of my old boyfriend? I made a joke, but then apologized for it before he helped me stretch my knee. Never do physical therapy in anger!
I finally got my new brace onto my knee last week. Pinky and I will have a beautiful long-term relationship. I'm still not wearing heels. Boo. And my insurance company granted me a generous exception and gave me two extra visits. According to them, I will be all healed by Friday. Yeah. Right. We're fighting that.
