"It feels like you're back"

The antibiotic I started taking Sunday a week ago seems to be doing its job. I made it to four hours of martial arts training this week, more than I've been to for a while. It was hard, hard training, and I can feel how I've fallen behind on push-ups in particular, but I made it, sweating buckets, through each class.

On Saturday I took two classes in a row. In the second, I grappled with Larry, my friend who had ACL surgery about a year before I did, and who now has his black belt. He's a much better grappler than I am; adding to the difficulty/novelty, I was trying the class without any brace. (I learned I should wear knee pads, the pressure when kneeling directly on my incision scar is painful.) At the end, Larry was very complimentary, saying I had properly gotten out of all his attempts to get me in locks or arm bars, and that I had also done my share of attacking. "It feels like you're back," he said.

This is very encouraging because grappling is the part of my school's curriculum that I feel the least skilled at.

Later that day, my wife asked me how I was feeling, and I said something like, "Pretty healthy." She smiled and said it's the first time she's heard me say that in weeks.

Maybe I am back.