In 2014 my word for the year needs to be PATIENCE! I had a three-week follow-up yesterday with my doctor on my stem cell procedure and he said “You did WHAT!???” right after I told him about my one-hour hike, 45 minute bike ride and 30 minute swim. He immediately told me to SLOW DOWN and be patient because my surgery was only three weeks ago and I’m definitely trying to do too much too fast.
Okay. That was a wake up call. I was telling him that there were lots of nights I was having trouble sleeping because my leg would ache. He then wanted to know if those nights were related to the amount of activity I’d done that day. It didn’t take me long to consider that, well yes, that was actually true. The more I did in a day, the harder trouble I had sleeping.
He then explained that I need to slow down and remember my baby stem cells are still infants and they need time to grow and develop into cartilage. “You will be healing for up to 18 months and we don’t want you to do more than 30 to 60 minutes of cumulative activity a day for the first 4-6 weeks. Then slowly increase the activity for up to 18 months until I’m back to my pre-surgery level.
Yikes. I guess that 60 minute hike in the mountains on December 30th (just 13 days after my procedure) was probably not a good idea? He said he was happy I felt up to doing that which is a great sign but I definitely need to slow down and take it easy.
So back to healing… Guess I’ll go for a short bike ride today. 🙂