More ramblings....
Left my rollator in the SUV at lunch again today. My sweetie is feeling less nervous about me doing this now. The first day he was pretty perturbed and worried that I was not ready for it, but then he saw that I could do it and eventually adjusted to that idea.
Then, after we came home my sweetie wanted me to try walking with just his trekking poles instead of my rollator or cane. He's getting more accustomed to the idea of me ditching the rollator I guess and he deserves a lot of credit for being so flexible in his caregiving.
So anyway, I briskly walked down the driveway and back with just his trekking poles, about 150 feet. The trekking poles just help with balance since you can't really put any weight on them. Interesting experience, and definitely good for me.
Also I talked to him about stairs. I haven't been near any stairs that I could try, since surgery. But our gym has wonderful stairs, that are not too steep and have unusually sturdy hand rails. There is also an elevator if I needed it to get back down. So anyway, we are going to go by there in a few days so that I can try stairs.
He also said that we can start going to the gym regularly again next week. Hope he doesn't change his mind on that. If we go I will keep "not overdoing" as my top priority since next week will be only my 12th week of recovery. There are plenty of upper body machines there that don't involve knees at all but would let me exercise my arm muscles. Also there are a few machines that involve knees that I could very VERY gently try, like the recumbent bikes or seated elliptical or the Nustep seated stair stepper. If I decide to try them then I will start with much, much less than I think I can do, almost nothing, with zero resistance and not for very long.
Or, if I wanted to I could walk around their climate controlled indoor track instead. It is a nice, safe, even surface and would be a good place to build up my walking distances (again, very very slowly). The inner lane has a sturdy rail to hold on to if desired, and that is where the slowest walkers are supposed to be so it would be perfect.
OK, a lot of this post was more about my hopes for the future than about things I have actually done, yet. Thinking about this sort of expansion of my horizons is almost as exciting as thinking about going for a ride in a car was, during my first and second week.