My leg feels naked now.

As the days passed and my impending doctor’s appointment got closer and closer, I kept thinking about what life would be like without my leg brace. So many things I took for granted before I had to wear it for six weeks after surgery:

* I could get out of bed and use the bathroom without having to clip anything onto my leg.

* I could move my shorts freely when sitting on the toilet instead of shifting them around at an angle across my lap because it was too much of a struggle to wiggle them down over the brace.

* I could take a shower without worrying about my underwear getting wet when putting it on or wearing a towel around my leg for half an hour afterward to make sure I wouldn’t soak anything else.

* Other things… well, maybe I shouldn’t have done them, but sometimes a man just needs to drive places. And shoot hoops in the driveway. And go bowling. Yeah, I didn’t exactly fill the doctor or physical therapist in on all of my recreational activities over the last six weeks.

Seriously, though, it felt like things came full circle about a week ago when I was searching for the ACL Reconstruction handout I got from the clinic and found a sheet with some physical therapy exercises on it. I was kinda confused because it showed most of the things I was supposed to be doing, but instead of stepping up onto a 6″ block (which, incidentally, is the exact height of three of my textbooks from law school), the picture showed the person in a lunging position dipping the rear knee down.

I became kinda un-confused when I looked at the date in the upper right-hand corner of the paper. The more recent version was from 5/24. The sheet I found was dated 4/16. Less than a month after the operation, I was doing the same exercises that the clinic had me doing to prepare for surgery.

The reasoning was obvious: I needed to build up some muscles that could atrophy over the next six weeks and they did atrophy. At my most recent visit to the physical therapist, I put my back against the wall, bent my knees at about a 45-degree angle and held that position as long as I could. As I leaned my head forward to look at my trembling thighs, I saw that the right one was noticeably smaller than the left. I heard some horror stories previously that made it sound like my leg would turn into a toothpick after six weeks, but it wasn’t that bad. (I blame the basketball.)

Eventually, my six-week doctor’s appointment arrived. I talked with the doc for a while, he answered a few questions, took an x-ray so I could see the bone screws in my leg, yanked my knee around a little—gotta make sure the new ACL is working properly—and gave me official permission to ditch the brace. I then spent a portion of the afternoon drinking fluids and taking a nap so I could wake up and head straight to the bathroom without putting on the brace. It was awesome.

Today wasn’t quite as awesome, but understandably so. On Saturday, I was helping some people shoot a short film and spent a lot of time on my feet, walking around, climbing stairs… my legs were tired at the end of the day. I didn’t walk nearly as much today, but I could also move my leg in any direction, not just forward and backward. After six weeks with that thing strapped to the sides of my leg, my quads haven’t shriveled up nearly as much as the stabilizing muscles on the sides of my knee.

Still, given the alternative, I’ll take my chances with a wiggly leg. I might not be able to take long, speedy walks for a while, but I can definitely make it to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Assuming I don’t drag my newly-freed leg too much and trip over a 6″ stack of law school textbooks.