When I was out in Snowshoe, WV during inauguration weekend with friends, one of the guys in our group had each of us go around the table every night and share our "pit and peak" (basically our high and low point) of the day. We were on vacation, so I mean, the pits weren't very pitty. Maybe someone ate it on the mountain while skiing, but life wasn't hard that weekend. We all got a good laugh out of playing along.


Photo stolen from Pete, who made us play pits and peaks

So I thought I'd play that little game with my PT because physical therapy has some real pits.

Pit: I feel like I had a pretty bad set back this weekend. My hip hurt like crazy on Saturday -- the worse its been since I started doing PT two weeks ago.

Peak: It felt back to "normal" on Sunday. Normal being the same level of stiffness and soreness I've had since I started PT.

Pit: I'm frustrated by what I perceive as a lack of progress.

Peak: PT Dan says we're making some progress. He sees more flexibility in my hip and most days my pain is way less than it had been before.

Pit: Dan thinks we might have to keep up with two sessions per week for a bit longer than he initially thought. He wants to see more progress before we drop down to once a week. I totally get it, but oh boy dagger for my wallet and a tiny bit for my morale. (It's cool, I will get over it, I was just excited to have that as a progress milestone because I'm impatient as heck).

Peak: Dan said I could run a 5K on Wednesday. This is actually a pretty huge peak and is making me feel slightly less like a Debbie Downer. There was this work race that I signed up for months ago, and I was pretty sure I'd have to drop out. But Dan said that it would be good for me to run it. It won't do any harm, and it will help us gauge how things have been going, how much soreness running causes, how quickly I recover, etc.

Peak: Dan is pretty good at pep talks when my morale goes straight into the toilet about this stuff. Please see this string of texts as evidence of that.


My hips were weak sauce...to put it technically lol

Peak: I like that my PT is someone I knew from college. It makes going in fun because even when some of the crap we're working on sucks or I'm not seeing the progress I want, we can usually laugh about it or Dan will bring up some funny story about tailgating from college that makes me temporarily forget that things suck.

So I guess it's not all bad. Yea, I'm frustrated sometimes, and the fact that my hip hurt at on on Saturday was super discouraging. But progress is good, even if it's baby steps. But I'd definitely rather be the hare than the tortoise when it comes to this recovery.