Um..What?

Well, I must say that the days and weeks following my knee replacement…I was in a LOT of pain. Like, mega pain. Like, these morphine pills are a joke pain. Like, these oxycodone pills are also a joke pain.

So I looked at my calendar and the day my mensi was supposed to start came and went (around mid month). Good…again, one less thing to worry about. I figured, as has happened to me in the past, my body decided that it was currently under too much stress, so it did me a favour and decided that I didn’t need to have my period this month. Well, that, or I was pregnant. And I’m not pregnant.

In the early part of February, I could barely deal with the amount of pain I was in. I actually felt like I was in an abnormal amount of pain. I was so close to having my Dad take me to the hospital or something because this simply was not right.  When I began physio, I couldn’t do ANYTHING that they wanted me to do. I took my pain medication 45-60 minutes before physio as instructed. It still didn’t help. Getting from the house to the car to drive to physio was torture. Getting from the car to my house after physio was even more torturous. Couple that with having to do this in the winter, where the ground was slippery and the sub zero temperatures zapped directly through my knee like a laser…it was nothing short of awful.  I really didn’t think that the given number of physio sessions would be enough. I looked at everyone else that was at physio and thought that they were all stronger than me. Mind you, I had no idea what kind of injury/surgery they had, or how far along they were in their recovery…but that’s how I felt. But, it didn’t matter. I’m young. They’re old. My recovery should be going much more quickly than it is.

On my first day of physio, I asked one of  the therapists what the procedure was for getting more physio sessions tacked on at the end, as I simply knew that I would be no where near ready to “go out into the world on my own” by the time my last physio session was due. 

But, through the pain and through the tears, I muscled my way through my physio sessions. There has been an amazingly huge turnaround from how I felt at the beginning of February vs how I feel now.  I was skeptical-I won’t lie. But I’ve managed to get to a point where I’m barely reliant on my cane, and don’t use the walker at all. I only use the cane to minimize extra stress on my knee, but I still practice walking without it and going up and down stairs without it. 

I got really irritated at physio the other day. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, as perhaps my anger was not fair. But nonetheless, I was annoyed.  I was doing the physio class today instead of the one on one as there was a miscommunication as it relates to my schedule. In this room are two parallel bars that are at about upper thigh level for me. The bars are quite lengthy so that several people can use the bars at once. It is meant to help people when they are walking, doing squats, stepping up and down a box that a physio puts on the ground to help with building strength, coordination, and, of course, simply practicing walking up and down stairs of various sizes/heights. I was in the middle section of the bars, and was gripping one bar with two hands while I practiced going up and down on my toes. Another lady, an older lady-perhaps in her mid 60s, was at the end of the bars being assisted with her own exercises.  She couldn’t have been more than a few weeks post-op.  While a physiotherapist instructed her on an exercise to do (stepping up on a low wooden box), she did it a few times then stopped. She said “I can’t do it”. She then gestured towards me “She can do it-she’s young so she can do it. I can’t”. It burned me up. Just because I’m young it doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain.  Just because I seem to be very mobile right now, it doesn’t mean I was this way 2 weeks ago. I turned around so that I wouldn’t have to look at her.  Maybe I overreacted and was unjustified with my annoyance…but yes-I was annoyed.

Anyhow, this was a maaaajor tangent. Let me get back to the point. 

I didn’t expect my period to come again until mid-march. I’ve been feeling much better as it relates to knee pain/flexibility, and for that reason the number and frequency of my pain medication usage has decreased. Imagine my surprise when my mensi decided to show up today-exactly 17 days late.  Why? Why couldn’t you just wait another 10 or so days until you were actually supposed to show up?

I spoke in another post about lupus and irregular periods. Since my kidney transplant, however, my periods have been perfectly predictable.  So in this case, it would appear that my body was so in tune with the pain I was in that it didn’t skip my monthly mensi entirely…it just…put it on hold?

I am really interested, moving forward, as to when my next mensi will come. Will is show up again in a couple of weeks? Will this be my new cycle? Only time will tell. In the meantime, I’m going to go make myself some cinnamon tea and a hot water bottle. These menstrual cramps are no joke whatsoever.