Back in the swim

So before all this hip saga started, I was an active chick, sitting still was not on my to do list! I enjoyed tennis, table tennis, running, biking, dancing, skating, swimming, anything that involved being active and being outside enjoying the fresh air. All the jobs I had involved physical activity and my first full time job, even though it was an 'office' job, involved running around town various places and up and down stairs all day. For the first 6 months I didn't even have a chair to go with my desk and never noticed! For the last 3 years though, I slowly lost one activity after another because of the pain factor, even though I tried to hang on to some things like dancing, many of my activities faded into memories as I couldn't deal with the pain or my body just wouldn't do as I asked it to.


Since my surgery, it has been my long term goal to regain all these lost activities as much as possible. But 9 months out I am still getting there, rehab is such a slow process, you don't want to do yourself anymore injury and you have to keep reminding yourself that for 3 years the muscles didn't work properly. The first part of rehab was simple, learning how to walk properly again! Remembering to flex the hip, straighten the knee before heel strike, and land on your heel and not toes like I did before surgery. Spreading the weight bearing evenly between both limbs and not just the unaffected side all the time. I even had to retrain myself to stand on both legs not just one. Even though I found this quite hard at the start is was the relatively easy part. Once I had mastered this, I was ready to start on the big stuff! Once your muscles have regained some of their strength, you then need to build up endurance.
Running long distances for fun is out of the equation, if I am to have my hip last a reasonable time before a hip replacement I have to look after it and running is not classed as 'looking after my hip'. Oh well, I'll just have to find something else to do for exercise. I had been going to the physio pool for hydrotherapy exercises twice a week, I spent half an hour at the side of the pool doing various stretches etc that are much easier in the water. But by now I'm thinking I really need to start swimming and prove that I can actually still swim, I am past my sideline exercises!
So a couple of weeks ago I took my goggles and took the plunge, after my warm up exercises I decided to try out the slow lane. I swam 12 lengths the first time and was quite happy with that achievement, I thought-leave it small then it is easy to improve on next time! Well the next time I was able to swim 22 lengths and this is half a km! I was so proud of my achievement even though I was bright red in the face after my effort. So now I am keeping up with my 22-24 lengths twice a week till I get to the point where they are quite easy and I don't get so short of breath and tired. I am hoping by the end of the semester I will be able to swim a whole km-how great would that be!