 Hello my beautiful internet friends, welcome back. Guess what? I took a shower this morning. I've really not been a fan of showers lately. They're just, they're such a hassle. They take so much time and energy and I'm exhausted when I get done with them, the whole showering with one leg thing. I'm still getting used to it, but I took a shower today and I thought, damn definitely I have to film a video because I look nice. Also don't get me wrong, I don't smell bad. At least no one has ever told me I smell bad in my face. Those of you who have met me in person, comment down below if that's true or not. Contrary to what it might seem like, you're not actually talking about showers in today's video. I wanna chat with you guys about some setbacks. I don't really wanna use that word because I don't think it's a setback as much as it is a part of the normal process of getting a prosthetic leg and learning to walk. I think this is just legitimately how it goes and how it's gonna go, but we've hit some roadblocks. Sunshine here, she's a lovely leg. I love her dearly, but she's causing some major issues with my knee. And if you remember previous videos before my last amputation, you remember that I was talking that I was a little bit concerned about my knee because it was giving me issues. It was causing pain. I think one of the reasons for that is that I was on the eye walk for so long. Nothing wrong with the eye walk. It's a fantastic tool. It's just that I was using it so often for so long and I already had preexisting issues with my knee. I've had surgeries on it and never healed fully from those either. And then I had this amputation and my leg was completely immobilized for four weeks. So my knee went from having a lot of constant pressure on it to being stuck in one position for four weeks straight. I had a lot of pain in my knee when my cast came off and I thought that's just part of it, right? That's just part of the stiffness. I'm getting used to moving my leg again, which is probably accurate to some extent, but it didn't totally go away. Like I had this sharp pain that hit certain parts of my knee depending on what I was doing that I was worried would interfere with me actually getting a prosthetic leg. Thankfully that didn't happen. I was able to get her, bring her home and start using her. But I have a downfall that goes something like I like pushing myself, especially physically to do as much as I possibly can. And that's something I feel like I'm constantly fighting against in this whole process because there aren't hard and fast rules about what you can do and what you can't do when you're learning to walk with a prosthetic leg. It's honestly kind of vague. Like you aren't supposed to push through extreme pain, but it's not gonna be comfortable either. And so I'll be totally honest, it's really confusing. And I feel lost a lot of the times, excited often, but very lost too. But I've noticed that there is this pain in my knee. At first it was just like a dull ache and oh it's kind of sharp some moments and it's sore. And now it's gotten to the point where I haven't worn my leg for three days. I tried wearing it for like a couple of hours last night and that was just a bad idea. I couldn't put any weight on it. I think a few things are at play and we're gonna have some visual demonstration going on. Also don't judge the fact that I'm wearing sweatpants. You usually only see me from like here up and sometimes it looks like I'm actually dressed for the day, but I'm really never. I'm usually just wearing, you know, athletic shorts or sweatpants here down. Here we have my little residual limb. Also you may note, I'm just seeing in the viewfinder right now, we've kind of got a little bit of that line coming back now that some of the swelling is going down if you remember, but it looks great. And I'm super happy with the work that they did. The pain here is normal. It hurts, but it's fine. Phantom pain comes and goes, but it's fine. But right here is not cool. It's like right up through there that I get this sharp aching, stabbing kind of pain. I think what's happening in part is this front part of my prosthesis, right? It's not the easiest to do. There we go. Right through there, I think it's hitting my kneecap and kind of pushing it back. It should be a normal thing if my knee wasn't having existing issues. So things are as standstill yet again. And honestly, it bothers me, but not that much because I figured that this process is gonna be like a red light green light kind of thing. I'm really working hard to control my expectations because if I let those get out of control, I'm just gonna walk around miserable so very often, which doesn't sound like any fun at all. Here's the thing. It's probably something super simple. Like I'm putting more weight on my leg than it's used to. I haven't been putting any weight on my leg in this way for like 12 months. So it might just be upset about that, right? Speaking of which, I'm gonna call in my friends out here. So the other night I was at a friend's house and we were talking about how my knee was causing some issues. And you know who you are. He was like, well, you know, it makes sense if your knee starts hurting because you're putting, and I quote, a shit ton of weight on it. And I was like, dude, are you calling me fat? Sorry, I just thought he was kind of funny because I think he was slightly horrified. Of course he didn't. He wasn't like talking about my weight. Oh, gotta have fun with the moments you're gonna have fun with, right? There's this feeling that I have and I was trying to think of a way to describe it to people the other day. Do you ever have a feeling that like you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop? Like you just know that something else is gonna happen? That's a feeling I'm really trying to fight right now because there's what is probably a relatively very simple issue going on with my knee. It's probably sore. It's probably tired. Maybe I stretched something or sprained something or I don't know, something happened, right? But in my head, I have all these horror visions of it needing surgery and then I can't walk for another six months and then at that point, something else is gonna happen and it's just never gonna end and it's really hard for me to control that fear because the second anything goes wrong, it's not like I spiral into complete negativity but I get so freaking scared. I think so far I'm doing a good job of just trying to look at it rationally but also I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared. So please cross your fingers that nothing is actually going wrong with my knee that actually stops me from being able to walk. Please God. Finding other things in my life to focus on has become extremely important because if this was the only thing that I cared about or if this was even the biggest thing in my life, I think I would be truly miserable. So it's been good to have YouTube to focus on and my job to focus on and my marriage and my friendships, journaling which I've been getting into more and learning about stoicism which is just like a passion I've had for a while. Man, when things are out of control around you, it's important. I found it personally important to focus on the things that are within our power which is what I'm attempting to do. I am waiting to get into physical therapy. I'm icing my knee every night, trying to take good care of it and I'm taking it super, super easy on Sunshine which is sad because I love her and I want to use her more. I hope you guys are doing well. This was a very just a general update kind of video but if you don't see me walking around on Sunshine physically, I mean mentally, I'll be trying to walk on Sunshine. If you don't see me physically walking on Sunshine, that's why. I do an appointment set with my prosthetist because I think there are things that we can modify with this and also I have a very, very cool video coming out with my prosthetist in the near future. Stay tuned. I am actually really psyched for this one and I think what we will be doing that day might help part of this issue. I just have to wait. Patience is the name of the game. Thank you so much to my patrons over on Patreon for supporting me and making these videos possible. I sincerely cannot tell you how much you are helping out during this time in our lives. If you're interested in what Patreon is or what you get for it or why I talk about it, I'll put a link down below and you can check it out there. Thank you, you watching this right now for watching this video. I really appreciate you spending a few minutes out of your day here with me. I love you guys. I'm thinking of you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys. Hey. And her from the sky all about