Physical therapy graduation

Over a span of seven weeks and 10 visits to the land of colorful fit balls and weird machinery, my lessons in physical therapy are over.

One more milestone on this long recovery. I embrace this one wholeheartedly as I literally and physically was in charge of making my hip, my leg and my body move and bend in ways they weren't used to!

For anyone going into this phase of recovery, my thoughts and tips:

• Physical therapy on the hip was much more, um, intimate, than I thought it would be. I'm happy I chose a woman therapist. She had to grab, massage, twist and hold not only my hip and groin area, but my butt as well.
• Water therapy was fantastic early on when I still couldn't move well.
• The exercises didn't hurt, but they often felt sore and made me sweat.
• I learned a lot about my body and the way it has compensated all these years for my bad hips. It's amazing how everything is connected. For example, my hamstring muscles are really tight to help protect the joint; I hyper extend my knees and arch my lower back to take pressure off the joint, which causes me to stoop in the shoulders a bit. I'm now very conscious of these "issues" and will continue to work to straighten them out, especially after the second hip is fixed.
• I am, as Jennifer would say, loosey goosey. (Even my sacroilliac joint is hyper mobile!) "Your body isn't supposed to do that," she would say over and over. Can't do anything about that, but I do like the sound of the nickname! ;)
• I did my exercises about three times a week. They weren't always the ones Jennifer laid out, but I think the important thing is that I was doing a different range of motions to get my muscles, tendons and ligaments used to being needed again.