February- The Shortest Month

Obviously in my previous post I started writing about February and what was going on with PT and some other things but that was nothing. For being the shortest month this February seemed like it would never end because of so many unknowns. 

The first week alone included PT where the therapist was teaching me basically muscle strengthening exercises to strengthen the support around my knee. As I progressed through PT for the month it became more obvious that stopping running at the end of October and wearing a brace for three months had been the smart thing to do. My MCL had healed and I was once again mostly dealing with soreness and some pain from my arthritic knee something that won’t improve. The good news is that my PT doesn’t say that I can’t run again but that I need to be very cautious and listen to my body and eventually the knee will probably wear out. It’s not a matter of if but when and I’m not going to live my life sitting around waiting for that to happen. So beginning January 31st with my first appointment I had four PT appointments and had to reschedule the fifth and probably final one until mid March because of other medical issues. 😳. 

On the 7th I had my first appointment with my oncologist/hematologist to try to get to the bottom of my anemia issues. After looking at all of my previous lab work he thought it would be best to get a bone marrow biopsy to eliminate certain causes. Once again I was thrown into the scheduling swamp which didn’t do anything to improve stress level. I finally got an appointment and had the procedure done on the 24th. Despite the doctor being very good and a lot of lidocaine I would prefer to not go through another one of those. 

As a way to cope with the biopsy and anxiety of waiting for results I found a race to walk so I would have at least one February race. It was cold, rainy and windy but it was the fastest of the four that I walked and I was second in my age group. It was good being around the running community again. 

The good news was that the results so far are negative. The other thing though is that there are still unanswered questions about the cause of my anemia so there are more labs and more appointments ahead. 

Another thing that made this seem like a long hard month was losing Sassy and Brandy’s Saint Zulu. Sassy very quickly lost the ability to walk and it got to the point she couldn’t even squat to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t watch her struggle any more and the vet agreed that she probably couldn’t get better. I lost her on Saturday and then Zulu died on Tuesday. The poor old guy had been on borrowed time with heart issues. 

The day before I lost Sassy I was home alone and had a medical emergency with one of the horses, Cody! I went out to the barn and noticed he was laying down which wasn’t unusual because he got right up when I went in to clean his stall but as soon as I left he laid back down. I got him up, did a couple more stalls and he was laying down again. Then he started acting strange and lifting a leg like he was in pain. The only thing I knew was to take him into the arena and keep him up and moving. Donna and Brandy were almost home when I called her and it turned out we had to have the vet out for an emergency visit. It all worked out fine but could have been bad if I hadn’t caught it. 

The worst part of the month was my youngest brother Rob’s struggle with cancer. 

Shortest month even with Leap Day! Maybe! But a rough one none the less!