Since my surgery I’ve been wearing sweatpants.  I tried wearing my usual jeans a few days after surgery, but they irritated my wound quickly, resulting in a nasty rash around it, so I switched to my comfiest loose sweatpants.  The rash quickly cleared up, so I decided to stick to sweatpants.  Today, with my wound healing very well, I went back to my jeans and they feel great again.

One big problem I had while wearing only sweatpants was the lack of a wallet pocket.  With nowhere to carry my wallet (most of my sweatpants have front pockets, sure, but my wallet barely fits into them, and when it does fit it just feels weird.  So as a result of this, I often forgot my wallet when I needed it, and even misplaced it a few times.  This resulted in a few pretty panicky situations, knowing all of what I would need to do if I really had lost my wallet.  Fortunately, I found it after a little searching each time, but that’s something I really fear with not wearing my regular pants, so I’ glad to be back in them.

So it’s “Jeans Day” for me… And it’s FREE… I don’t even have to pay $5 to wear them… at least for another few weeks that is.  To elaborate, at work (Vista Medical Center) they have “Jeans Days” on some Fridays when you can wear jeans to work…if you donate $5 to charity.  So we normally just wear dress pants, making wearing jeans (at work, at least) a little special.

My next checkup with the doctor is on October 23rd, ten days from now.  I’m hoping to get cleared for work at that time, or at least I should be able to find out when I can plan on returning.  Physical Therapy is progressing, but they say it’s slow.  My primary focus is with the bending of the knee.  They say it needs to be up to 115 to 120 degrees.  I’ve been at 100 degrees for a week now.  I’m doing some pretty painful 5-minute stretches 5 times a day to push it further, but so far I haven’t seen much improvement.   So with this issue, and the fact that I won’t be able to continue with my physical therapy sessions and work at the same time, I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to return to work just yet.  I’ll find out on the 23rd.

I am back to walking at least 1 mile a day though, so that’s helping, and I’ve actually dropped a few pounds since just after the surgery.  I also saw a dietitian this week and learned how to count carbs and was given a reasonable plan that should allow me to lose weight a little faster.  We’ll see how it goes.