I’m Not A Weekend Warrior

photo by T. Scott Carlisle

In the middle of packing, moving, re-painting, and cleaning my apartment, I imagined my Monday post like this:

Hi all, Superhuman Tracey here. Just stopping by to tell you that I worked my butt off this weekend, moved my life to the new apartment, and didn’t feel any knee pain! Off to do some unpacking and furniture arranging.

Things started well enough: Thanks to super-helpful family members, we were able to move the entire apartment in a day, paint three bedrooms back to bland taupe in a weekend, and unpack our whole kitchen. I, of course, didn’t lift a single box—hey, I had strict orders from The Man!

But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t active in other ways. I helped my mom paint our old apartment, which meant I was up and down about 5 gazillion times. Plus, since the elevator was hauling boxes, I climbed and descended three flights of stairs. Add a little unpacking on my feet, slamming my knee into a box—twice—carrying a somewhat heavy bag to the new apartment, and stepping up and off of a chair a dozen times and you’ll see why I’m not as cheery today as I had imagined.

Last night, when my mom and I finished unpacking the kitchen, I looked at my knees for the first time. Holy water balloons. My left knee had swollen to its post-PRP size. My right was a little swollen, but not nearly as inflamed as the left. Both hurt with an intense throbbing and dull ache under the kneecap plus a sharp pain down my shins, behind my knee, and in my hamstrings.

It was the first night in a long time that I had trouble falling asleep because of the pain. By morning, the swelling had gone down considerably, but both knees were still swollen and throbbing—the left more so than the right.

I’m pretty worried I did something stupid and irreversible to my healing knee. Did I just kill my chance at recovery? Will this set me back a few weeks? Months? Will the PRP continue to work even though I beat up my knee all weekend? I’m hoping a little R&R will bring down the swelling, stop the pain, and get me right back on track. But I’m not sure if that’s just wishful thinking.