How Paying Attention Helps Recovery

Stupid shoes caused a fall. The shoes encased my foot and it couldn’t move, couldn’t feel the ground. My brain had no idea what kind of surface, slippery or bumpy, was under my feet, and I fell. Turned out, I nicked my lateral meniscus on my left knee, and needed surgery. That was four years ago.

I was training to become a trainer with Z-Health (zhealth.net), a company that marries neuroscience with movement by teaching the body better communication with it’s nervous system and brain. Recovery went well; my knee is fine.

I injured my other knee at the same time, but it took awhile to complain. For the last year, kneeling caused sharp pain. I returned to the same surgeon, Dr Jonathan Franklin, of Proliance Surgeons, for surgery on the other knee. As soon as I was scheduled for surgery, I began strengthening  quads, hips, and knee ligaments. Upped my cardio. Added eye drills and balance work. I needed balance after surgery and I wanted the recovery process minimal. I rested well, and cut out as much sugar as I could stand. This, in an effort to be in the best possible shape for an assault on my knee.  I have been through this before, I know the rehab procedures. Light eating, breath work, eye drills, balance work, and joint mobility have speeded up recovery.

Day 5; I have no pain, I walk up and down stairs without hitching a hip, my swelling is subsiding, and I do drills every day, several times. Healing is a process that done well, is a mild annoyance, not future and permanent incapacitation. Life is dings, I know rehab.

I expect to be as good as new when healed. I am not 17 anymore; it takes time, probably a couple of years to be completely healed on the inside, although it may feel fine on the outside in a couple of months. Now I am strengthening  quads again, and still doing the eye drills and the balance work.  If you think that a couple of years is too much work, then get ready for continued issues, and lack of choice. For me, this is a cheap price to pay for life without pain, without medication, without wheelchairs and walkers, without giving up the life to which I have become accustomed, without remorse.

Because I saw surgery as a battle, I prepared holistically, involving diet, rest, breath work, joint mobility, visual and vestibular input. The body is a whole. Recovery should be whole. I had a great team surrounding the process of surgery and rehab. The whole body participating in whole recovery. Aging well isn’t for everyone. You have to work at it. For my money, it’s the only choice.

This is Aging Intelligently.