Testing Times

It's been thirteen days of Injury Recovery since I was tripped and trampled in the final five of the Knights' season opener victory.  It has been an interesting experience, from the initial shock and dread to the first glimmers of hope after a little education, learning about the amazing knee and applying this to make more of my body sense, the weird feeling of embracing the recovery process as another adventure, the discipline of icing and bolstering the knee during the first week, the joy of taping and removing the tape days later (not), the challenge of maintaining exercise routine with a change of focus onto the micro development of the knee's support structures of quads, hamstrings and calf muscles to complement the core workouts and make up for the dropped lower body circuits, the daily measurement of improvement on such metrics as achievable squat position, degree of extension, perception of discomfort, etc.

I gave myself full core workouts on Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday have more concentrated on working the quads and upper calf muscles with physio-type routines.

On Tuesday night I took the plunge and spent $30 on three kinds of athletic tape - standard 3" stretch, 2" hyperallergenic stretch and 2" rigid.  After a fair bit of contemplation on the various techniques and philosophies of sport physios I ended up with strapping above and below the knee to anchor an extension limiting 'brace' at the back of the joint.  This gave a lot more stability and support than I would have imagined, allowed me to concentrate on healing rather than injury prevention.  The worst part about it was ripping it off of my hairy legs last night before reapplying a fresh set of strapping.

The plan now is pretty simple.  Today I will continue to take it easy, maybe with a core circuit and definitely some more physio drill on the support muscles around the knee.  Tomorrow around midday I will go down the Arena to give it a try out under load conditions.  That will give me an idea if it is stupid or not to dress and play on Sunday night.

When go to the ice on tomorrow lunch, will take Jess's BF Craig with me, he has been asking questions about pathways to playing ice hockey for awhile.  I think he might be getting more than interested.  Another hockey player in the family!

I'll play if I'm able.  I won't if I'm not.  It all relies on my continuing honesty.