Made it to Staging, Graduated from Physical Therapy!

This is a happy update: things are really moving along! I got my staging packet in the mail and completed physical therapy for my knee, after only two sessions. My staging packet has some specifics like flight information and my meetup location & time for getting together with other departing volunteers on Sept 26. It also has some reading materials to prime the expectations of the soon-to-be volunteer as well as the family and friends they leave behind (appropriately titled "On the Home Front" -- check it out online if you're interested in what the Peace Corps says my experience will be like).

Everything feels a lot more real now, and I'm happy to say I'm secure in my decision - no second-guessing for this girl. Even so, I'm wondering if I should look into beginning a course of Malaria treatment in a week or so; I've heard it's good to get your immune system up to speed a couple weeks before departure. I'm also happy to say Mom and Dad are treating my decision in a more practical way; I'm interpreting their requests for trip details as movement toward coping.

Physical therapy was a good experience, and I really like the holistic way that it works to treat a specific problem. My particular physical therapy was centered on strengthening my quadriceps and other muscles that surround and support my knees. I learned a total of 9 exercises that move and stress my muscles in different ways, but they're all simple to do - requiring little equipment and preparation. The exercises were tough, though; not only do they take up a fair amount of time every day (>1 hr), they made me sweat! But I saw improvement come really quickly, which has encouraged me to keep it up.

I've had trouble adhering to prescribed treatments or schedules before, but this time, the importance of sticking with the routine has finally gotten through to me. I have enough family members and friends with lasting physical problems to know it's important I try to prevent what I can.