Knee injury.
Day Six
My movement continues to improve. Still stiff and walking awkwardly, but not as much as yesterday. Feeling better, happier.
Progress!? Went swimming again with daughter. My knee felt weird and stiff and it hurt, a bit. What was wrong? Was it that I couldn’t bend my knee to do a kick? Or was it hard to have my knee extended while horizontal in the water? Not sure, but I mostly swam with my arms and, occasionally my left leg. I might have been upset about this but I wasn’t because when I got out of the lake, my knee felt much better than before I got in. I was able to walk over 1/2 mile with my daughter. I’m hoping to go swimming again this evening.
Maybe I’m feeling better because I had a good morning. Inspired by two separate online essays, I memorized a poem: Gerard Manly Hopkin’s “Spring and Fall.” I remember first reading this poem in high school and loving it. So fun to memorize. Trying to find a poem about injury/illness, I came across Shel Silerstein’s “Sick”: “I cannot go to school today/said little Peggy Ann McKay….” I think I need to memorize it next.
Today’s poetry challenge: Rondeau
15 lines: 1 quintet, 1 quatrain, 1 sestet
8-10 syllables
refrain (r): first few words or full first line of quintet
rhyme scheme: aabba aabr aabbar
A Morning Swim, After the Rain
The water is too cold today.
No sun to warm it, not a ray.
A drop of water hits me and
makes me long for warm, dry land.
Yet, knowing that I have no say,
that I must swim, I must obey,
I bravely enter as I’d planned.
But the water is too cold.
Just feet from shore, I feel dismay.
My googles fog, the world looks gray.
My hurt knee cries out a demand
of pain that is too much to stand.
That’s it! I leave without delay.
Besides, this water is too cold!
Swam again in the afternoon. This time, 440 yards. Knee still hurts to swim. Not sure why. Decided it was too risky to do a loop. What if my knee popped out in the middle of the lake? It was tough not to swim.
Discovered while sitting on the ground with my legs extended that I can easily lift my straightened left leg, but my right one refuses. It will not lift. And when I grab my right foot to raise it, it hurts. Is this a bad sign or just the last of the injury?
Knee status: continued improvement, still walking slowly, swimming is difficult.
Treatment: ice once for 10 minutes, no ibuprofen, loosening up leg in cold water.