For those who have been following my recovery from hernia surgery, skip this intro bit. For those who haven't, I had double hernia surgery in June, and was doing really well with my recovery. My two week check up ended with my surgeon telling me, "You can run in a month." Awesome. Then the next day (July 6th), I turned to the right, and felt like I ripped every stitch and was in misery nearly all the time for the next two weeks. Her response to that, "Take a week off from any exercise (I had been doing fast walks and some work on the elliptical) and let things cool down. Then just do slow walks for the next month, and see what happens." Obviously, I was less than thrilled.
Well, I got through the 'no activity' week and saw my pain diminish slightly, but it was still really strong. Then I went into the slow walk thang, and was OK, but not great and pretty bummed. I found that my pain was less intense but much more frequent. I was really discouraged. I wrote about all of this in a blog post.
(OK, if you knew all of this, start reading again)
I decided to reach out to a family member who had gone through two hernia surgeries, including an open double operation like me. I asked about her recovery, and she said a few things that helped. She had pain like mine, and it wasn't there from day one, like mine. It lasted through to about month three. And the thing that got her through it was the elliptical. The reason was that it was a smooth, non-jarring way to stretch the scar tissue, build muscle and keep her fit and strong. I couldn't say that about walking on a treadmill at a slow to moderate pace (3-4 mph). I decided to ignore the advice I got from my doc, and add some elliptical into my morning 'PT' routine. I started with five minutes with very little resistance (5 out of 20 on my Life Fitness equipment). It felt great - no pain, no awkwardness, and no more issues afterward than I had before.
Today, I replaced my entire morning walk with 30 minutes of elliptical work at 7 out of 20, and felt good again. In fact, the rest of the day, I can say this is the best my incisions have felt in nearly a month. I decided to go for a brisk walk outside this afternoon (in 90+ degree heat!), and ended up jogging (8-8.5 minute mile avg pace) half of it (1.2 miles) in two intervals with 14 minute mile walks in between, and really wasn't in any more pain than when I was walking for the other half.
What hit me is that I did the right thing in reaching out to my family member and then judging my body and what is best for it myself. For one thing, I needed the piece of mind I got from having someone who had been through this tell me that they lived it, understand what I mean, and they got better.
My surgeon didn't have much of an explanation and didn't seem to think she's heard of this from other patients (she's done this surgery a lot, and has literally a perfect track record of zero recurrence, so she knows her stuff). My surgeon is great and really listens and cares, but she only knows my situation based on how I describe it and how she interprets that. I also feel like doctors inherently will tell you to rest rather than work through it in a different way (maybe due to liability and fear of getting sued?). That's not to say you should blindly ignore medical advice, and it's hard to know when to listen and when to decide you know better what will work for your body, but it's important to know that you can and should at least challenge advice a bit and see if another approach is out there which could work. Know your alternatives.
Lastly, what hit me is that this was an example of what I blogged about from chapter 3 of Tread Lightly by Pete Larson and Bill Katovsky. It's a great chapter on injuries - avoiding them and how to recover from them. Larson talks about changing what you're doing to use different muscles and apply different forces to your body than the those you get in the exercise that hurts you. Moving to the elliptical was a bit of this - it uses my body differently from what I was doing (more jostling/jarring motions) while allowing me to go through the necessary process of stretching my scar tissue so I can get back to normal.
So, a bit of reinforcement to my prior blog post, and a bit of advice about recognizing when you know your body better than someone else and that it's OK to get a second opinion, whether from another doctor, a family member or even yourself.
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