Hop to it

It's been a long eight months for Chad and his bum knee. From tearing his ACL and meniscus in September (fortunately, after our trip to Paris) to surgery in November, Chad's been learning to walk again, run again, and even squat again. He's been a diligent patient, not doing more than he should - except for that time in December he shoveled the driveway after it snowed six inches.

We've spent more on physical therapy in 2010 than we have on a lot of other things - and the bill we got in the mail a few weeks ago was 23 pages long. (Fortunately, we had to pay a small fraction of the $15,000 or so the insurance company has had to fork over.) And he's still been going to physical therapy bright and early every Monday morning. They've got him doing everything from standing one-legged on a ball (the bad leg) to build up strength and learn how to accommodate sudden movements to working on the rotation of the knee so that it really can bend all the way back, and hopping, skipping and jumping.

Chad has passed most of his tests with flying colors, but one continues to elude him: the hop test. It sounds simple enough - hop forward three times as far as you can on your good leg. Then go back to where you started and hop forward three times on your "bad" leg. If the hop on his bad leg is 80% of what it is on his good leg, he passes. The first time he tried it a few weeks ago, I think he was at like 45%. Not good.

This test has been giving him fits for weeks, and every now and then I'll see him standing in our hallway at night, concentrating intently on his hops. While much of this is physical, some of it is mental. (If I'd torn my ACL to smithereens, I'd probably have a hard time getting over it, too.)

But the clock is ticking: it's almost D-Day. Chad goes back to the surgeon for his monthly check-up this Thursday, and has been hoping to get cleared to play his favorite sports. But after failing his hop test last Monday in physical therapy, he was discouraged that he might have to go another month playing only golf and watching football from the sidelines. He asked his physical therapist if he could work on it for a week and do his final hop test on the Monday before his appointment.

Last night, when the opposing team hadn't shown up for football, Chad's team decided to scrimmage. I had to squint - twice - to confirm that Chad, who has spent the last month "coaching," was lacing up his cleats. Even though he played quarterback for both "teams" and didn't get within three feet of an opposing player, I think I held my breath the whole time. He said it was great to get out and "play" again, and was nice to see him running around as his nearly-normal self.

When Chad called me this morning to tell me he passed his hop test, I almost jumped out of my chair. Not only did he pass it, the "hops" were so close that his physical therapist didn't even measure them. To prove that he wasn't just half-hopping on the good leg, he did it again with the same result.

For both of us - Chad more than me, of course - it's almost the end of a really long road. We're both optimistic that Chad will be cleared for full activity when he goes to see the surgeon on Thursday, so our summer of football, softball and basketball is about to begin. And while Chad's back on the field, I'm going to look for ways to spend all that money we've been allocating to rehab. Let the fun begin!