Downscaling.net

Every day my husband asks me, “Are you better today than you were yesterday?”

Every day, I could confidently answer that question. I was getting a little more mobile and a little less achy with each passing day. I felt like Wonder Woman — ahead of every curve for someone who just had major surgery.

Until yesterday.

Monday, Monday. Can’t trust that day.

I was apprehensive about my final in-home physical therapy visit Monday morning. I knew the therapist wanted me to get to at least a 100 degree angle on my seated knee bend. I wanted to reach that milestone. I’d had a wonderfully progressive weekend — my leg was very bendy and hardly achy at all.

I was able to get in and out of the car, tool around Target and Kroger on a Mart-Cart, make potato salad and other side dishes for Sunday’s dinner — all by only lightly leaning on my cane.

I was low on Percocet and so I was supplementing it with Tylenol and that seemed to be working.

Still, I was concerned that my knee just wouldn’t stretch back far enough to earn that triple-digit angle. But if I passed that test, I was planning to reward myself with a night out at a book club meeting. Make this last milestone, I told myself, and you’ll have earned a celebration with friends and a rousing discussion of The Bloggess’ book, “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.”

When the therapist arrived, she wanted me to walk outside to see if I could get a little speed under my feet, raise my heart rate a little. Brimming with all kinds of confidence, I scaled down our houses four front steps and was striding down the blacktop driveway, cane in hand, when my calf muscle in my right leg said, “Bitch, please.”

CONTRACT!

Worst cramp I have ever had in my life. Tears rolled down my grimaced face. I tried a couple of more steps to walk it out. My calf muscle insisted, “Bitch, apparently, you don’t listen. I said NO.”

Apparently my calf muscle is fond of calling me a bitch and it contracted that much tighter.

It was all I could do to get my hefty ass back into the house and into a chair, where my therapist applied an ice pack to my rigid leg muscle and recommended I get some magnesium tablets.

There was no seated knee bend test, as I could barely move my leg without excruciating pain. The therapist left.

It took more ice, my last two Percocet, a muscle relaxer and a banana (for the potassium) before I could put any weight on my leg at all.  And the cane was now at rest; I was back leaning on my little-old-lady walker.

Remembering that the restaurant where my book club was meeting usually seated large parties on it’s second level — up two flights of stairs — I knew my big night out was probably out of the question. I called the restaurant to confirm that our party would be seated upstairs.

Had I retained the mobility I enjoyed over the weekend, I know I could have slowly angled my way up those steps. Now with my calf muscle holding a death grip on my lower leg, there was no way I could make it.

Shit.

I cried just a little in disappointment.

Three weeks to the day since I had every muscle and nerve in my leg severed and sewn back on to a prosthetic, I guess I should expect the occasional setback. But this was the first big one — the first day that was not better than the last one.

I am clearly not Wonder Woman.