13

Today's post is dedicated to my major accomplishment... no matter how small it may seem to other people!

While at work in Oct of 2008, I fell and injured my knee traversing a muddy/rocky hillside (gotta love that Alaskan terrain!) in an attempt to coral an escape artist (you've also gotta love kids that run away from school!).
A torn meniscus *which I was told (by many medical professionals) is a simple fix with a very unlikely chance of re-injury* took me on a magical journey...
One which included re-injury 2 times, 3 surgeries, months of physical therapy, months of chiropractic care/massage, and every cream/steroid/injection/pill you could think of... oh, and let's not forget two out of state IME's *Workers Comp's way of trying their best to disprove you are injured and require medical care*.

Post surgery loveliness

The 3rd surgery, which took place on my birthday 12/13/10 *Happy 26th!* fixed not only my meniscus but some cartilage damage to the knee cap. Hence the robo-brace for 12 weeks. That was fun. not

Besides lots of aches and pains, lots of medical bills *after Workers Comp made the decision that the two re-injuries were in no possible way related to the first injury and they would no longer cover any treatment o_o* and lots of lost time having fun with my son/friends/family... the worst part of it all had to be the 60 lb weight gain. Long bouts of almost complete inactivity over 3 years has not been kind to me.
The last physical therapy session I completed (in May of 2011), my therapist had me try an Elliptical. I made it to 1 minute and had to quit. My knee had made drastic improvement over the past 2.5 years, but still wasn't ready for working out :(

Over the summer I conditioned my poor knee with lots of walking, stretching and massage. I even found a used Elliptical on Craigslist for $30! SCORE! By August I was able to use the Elliptical for almost 3 minutes. Slowly but surely I was improving my stamina. Go me!

Then came the disastrous hiking adventure... *small detour, to explain the second half of this post!*
I went to visit my boyfriend Ryan in Wrangell, AK for 2 weeks of commercial fishing.

Fact; fish are slippery

Fact; Killary is a salmon slayer

We took a trip up the Stikine River

Fact; I fall. A lot. 

I took a dip, more than once, oops.

We hiked up to The Tubs (a naturally occurring hot spring which has been routed to fill hot tubs out in the boonies).

On the hike back from The Tubs I sprained my ankle. Not just a sprain, no. Leave it to me... I tore both tendons off my ankle and pulled out little chips of bone too. Yay!

Being the badass that I am I <s> cried, crawled and fell some more</s> hiked a mile back to the jetboat, gill-netted for 2 days and THEN took a trip to the Wrangell ER.

This is what my ankle looked like after 2 days

Fast forward to 8 weeks later (after wearing a monstrous aircast boot, a slimmer in-shoe aircast, and now no aircast with only minimal swelling)... I hopped on *cautiously. Remember my tumbling talent?* the Elliptical and did 13 minutes! 13!!

13 minutes is a major improvement from the 1 minute I could do just 5 months ago.

I am so pleased with my knee/ankle performance, and can't wait to workout again tomorrow!

Let's all cross our fingers (and eyes, toes, arms etc) that I don't fall any time soon and start the vicious cycle of injury, treatment and recuperation all over again!