I stood up from a chair yesterday, only to fall right back in it when I found that trying to put weight on my right leg hurt. A lot. I waited a few minutes and tried again – tried harder to walk – and collapsed back into the chair in even more pain. After several more tries, I realized it wasn’t going to go away. At that point, I went into planning mode and determined what the course of action would be when Seth got home from work. Load up the kids, drop me off at urgent care, they go home to eat dinner and not wreak havoc on the urgent care facility (and me), call and get picked up by Seth when done. While waiting for him to come home, I rolled around the house on my office chair – checking dinner in the oven, etc.
Turns out I have torn my hamstring where it enters my knee. Hopefully resting will cure it, and I really am going to try to rest. I feel sheepish having to ask for so much help, and just sitting like a lump when I *could* actually get up and do something. Being active probably would delay my recovery, though. Even though Seth demonstrated for me how one could go up the stairs with crutches (yeah, it’s easy if the crutches are set 6″ shorter than you need them!), I ended up going up the stairs backwards, sliding up one step at a time on my butt. This morning, after a nice rest, I was able to hobble down them one at a time. I’ve been limping around not using the crutches this morning since there wasn’t pain doing that (if I straighten my leg there is immense pain), but now it’s even starting to hurt just limping. So, back I go on the crutches, and my butt is going to be parked in this office chair most of the day again. I have to call someone to ask them to take Quinn to kindergarten. I think I could drive, but Seth says that is not a good idea. The rug near the door out to the garage is knee deep in sand/salt/grime from the roads, and I’ve pondered vacuuming. I think I could vacuum on crutches, but I can’t figure out how to get the vacuum from upstairs.
So, I need a few days to recover, and if it doesn’t feel better by Monday, I have to go to my regular doctor. Not sure what would happen then. Brace? Rehab? Surgery?
In hindsight, perhaps I should have seen it coming. I used my elliptical machine a whopping two times last week, and my knee (well, sort of the side/back area near my knee but not the knee itself) hurt both times. But it felt better as soon as I was done exercising. Monday of this week I used the elliptical again, but my knee didn’t hurt at all. Though thinking back, I do recall now that I was watching a movie (Ocean’s 12) while exercising, and during a quiet part of the movie, I found it strange that there was a clicking noise. It seemed out of place. Ah, I realized it was my knee making that noise. Strange, but I’m no stranger to aches and pains while I exercise. It didn’t all add up to anything significant. At least in my mind. My hamstring apparently felt different about the situation.
So, the moral of the story is that exercise causes nothing but pain and heartache, and you should avoid it at all costs. A corollary moral is that crutches make your armpits hurt. Also, the rubber/plastic part of crutches stink. And by combining the two, you see that crutches make your armpits stink, also.
P.S. I’m wondering if the new president had anything to do with this, or a political activist that was offended by my post from yesterday. So far, the change I have seen in my life with a new president has not been the good kind!
