Outpatient Physiotherapy

Right I'm about all caught up now...

Today was my first physiotherapy appointment since I left the hospital. I was told my leg was doing fantastically well and the range of motion in my foot, knee and ankle were all greater than was to be expected at this stage. I was also reassured that the lack of feeling across my lower shin and the top of my foot is completely normal with this amount of metal passing through your leg.
After the physiotherapist massaged the huge amounts of blood out of my hulk like foot she proceeded to perform some stretches on me, I made the mistake of telling her I could barely feel the calf stretches, she soon rectified that. After this she showed me how to walk with only one crutch which I happily managed across the gym and back, it puts a lot more weight on the broken leg but from what I gather these frames give back what you put in and ultimately the breaks will heal better and faster under loading. I'm keen to get off the crutches for that reason. I was told that it completely depends on the patient, some will be on crutches for the entire period, some people are off them in as little as four weeks. I intend to be the latter if at all possible and after tomorrow nights party I’ll only be using one crutch as much as possible.
After this I was put on a wobble board which stretched the ankle in every conceivable direction, and then I was put onto a trampoline (Yup!) and Nat was told to throw a basketball at me so they could asses my balance...
The final test was to see how much load I was actually putting through the frame, we did this just as some climbers have done, with a set of scales. The maximum load I exerted was equal to around 40kg, which I didn’t think was bad for a first try out of 55kg. That’s above 70% anyway. Just another 15kg to go and I can kiss the crutches good bye!

Next week i've got to go back in to have one of the wires removed, it doesn't sound like much fun to me...