Water Aerobics - 1 hour
Why I Take Water Aerobics
In January of 2000, on a Friday afternoon, I raced my four month old son, Alex, to the neighborhood hospital. He couldn’t breathe well and was turning blue. The emergency room diagnosed him with Respiratory Syncytial Virus. RSV, as it is called, is a common virus that leads to cold-like symptoms in adults and children but can be very serious for young babies. He was hospitalized for a week and I stayed with him the entire time.
Alex was kept hydrated and given nutrients via an IV in the hospital. When we were back at home, it was up to me to provide his nutrition. I had been nursing him, nearly constantly it seemed, before he got sick. But his breathing was so labored that nursing was just too difficult for him. I tried to pump my breasts, to keep up my milk supply, but I suppose the lack of sleep and stress of the hospital stay proved to be too much for me. I was devastated. It took days of crying (mine and the baby's) and trying different formulas and bottles and nipple combinations, but eventually he began to eat.
Just a few weeks after coming home from the hospital, my husband, who is absolutely devoted to the idea of family, insisted that we go to his parent’s cottage for the annual ski trip. At that time in our life, my husband just couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing his parents. So we packed up our six kids into the GMC Suburban and drove eight hours in blustery winter weather to Northern Michigan.
Once we arrived, everyone insisted that I go skiing and leave the babies (Randi, 18 months, and Alex, nearly 5 months) with Grandma and Grandpa. “Go have some fun. You aren’t the only person in the world to have babies, you know! We can take care of them!” I did not want to leave my little kids for an entire day, especially Alex, and I did not know how to ski.
So, admittedly, I did have a bad attitude from the very beginning of that day. We all piled into vehicles for the hour trip to the ski hill. I trudged through the slushy parking lot, dressed in a mish-mash of ski clothes abandoned at the cottage in 1970. By the time I got to the lodge, I was exhausted and sweating profusely. My breasts, freshly retired from nursing, were sore and rock hard and felt as if they weighed 20 lbs each.
I whined at my husband the entire time and he kept saying, “You are a great athlete. You will be great at this. You’ll be passing us all. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah!”
I wanted to grab his face in my hands, point his head down into my chest and yell, “Look at these! My boobs are so engorged that I can’t even stand up straight. I'm not practicing to do a ski jump here. I just can't stand perpendicular to the ground!”
But I knew that wouldn't work. He would just be worried about the complete strangers standing around us, hearing me use the B word!
So, like an idiot, I put on the skis and without a minute of lessons headed towards the lifts. Leading with my chest, I fell getting on the lift, fell getting off the lift and I fell within minutes of starting down the hill.
Which is when I tore my ACL. The ACL is one of the ligaments that connects the shin bone to the thigh bone, which helps stabilize the knee. At first I could not walk, period. Over time I was able to put weight on the leg. But without an ACL I had to limit my activities, even the kinds of shoes I wore, because my knee would slip slightly out of place and I would fall. So I wobbled around on it for nine years, until January 2009, when my knee was so swollen that I couldn't really walk on it any longer. By the time I had the ACL replacement surgery, the cartilage cushioning my knee joints had been damaged significantly. Discovering the damage during surgery, the surgeon performed microfractures, creating small holes in the end of my femur with a sharp awl. These microfractures allow the deeper, more vascular bone to access the surface layer. This deeper bone has more blood supply and the cells can then get to the surface layer and stimulate cartilage growth.
This new cartilage resembles scar tissue and does not have the strength of normal cartilage. As a result, the new cartilage may not stand up over time, especially in individuals who participate in high impact activities.
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