Knee Injury Update with Introspection
Three weeks later my knee is about 75% better. It's still fragile and I have to be careful with it, but I can do most non-athletic things now. The whole experience has been... thought provoking. It makes me yet more appreciative of my normal, mostly uninjured state. Even during year 2 of my 2 year (mostly) recovery from my last injury, for 90% of the things I do the injury was a non-issue. Though it totally stopped me from doing other things I really enjoy, like full lotus pose and putting my feet behind my head, these are unusual things that most folks never do and that I have no need to do in daily life. Spending a week unable to walk properly, another week still avoiding stairs, and now a third week still improving but with some pain and the regular pain-based reminder that I need to be very careful or I could easily re-injure the knee has been interesting. Perhaps the thing I like least is the insecurity. The possibility of making things worse. The pain is really minor. And at this point three weeks on, there aren't too many things short of running and much of my yoga practice that I can't do. But, there is the ever-present worry that I could do something, possibly something really minor, innocent, and random to set it back to where I started. The original injury itself came from doing something that, though it makes sense how it happened, seemed completely innocuous. It's like when I passed 43 or so I started rolling on the random injury table every day to see if some random nonsense will mess me up. The chances are low, but they happen. I keep trying to exercise in ways that will make me more injury resistant, but despite my patient and mindful workouts, there seems no escape from entropy. Damn aging. Ah, well.