Knee Surgery - Part 3

Well, I have made it through most of the week. Monday was tough. I have had to have someone drive me to work daily, since the brace is on my right leg and I cannot use my foot properly yet. Anyway, Monday sucked at work due to the fact that I had to limp around on crutches. Tuesday was much better, but still not great.

Then Tuesday afternoon, I had my first physical therapy appointment. We worked on some knee messages, flexing of my quad, straight leg lifts while laying on my back, and some leg bends. It was crazy. After only 5 days, my leg had begun to atrophy. I had trouble getting my quad to fire, and after a few tries finally got it to fire, but it was tough. Same with the leg lifts - it was as if I had never lifted my leg and it took alot of energy.

The toughest part were the leg bends. We did an assisted set of 10, and due to the swelling, I could only bend 60 degrees. It felt like my knee was going to explode because of how tight it was.

Wednesday the knee began to feel much better and the PT had actually given me some flexibility. I was able to remove my brace in the car and bend my leg, making sitting much easier. Wednesday night, though, I woke up in pain and had to ice the knee for about 15 minutes. This helped alot and allowed me to fall back to sleep restfully.

Thursday morning I had my second PT session. We did alot of the same, but a little more progression. We did some leg raises, lateral leg raises on both sides, and some leg lifts while laying on my stomach. Then we did some of the leg bends, this time achieving a 79 degree bend - so about a 19 degree improvement.

Then the fun part started! We did electrical muscle stimulation on the quad to make it fire. At first the stim device was causing major pain and causing a 100% contraction of my quad - not a very comfortable position - especially given a weak knee. Then she had me fire my quad at the same time the machine fired it. This was very beneficial. By the end of the day, I was able to fire the quad pretty well. I was even permitted to walk and put pressure on the leg while using the brace and crutches.

So overall, I'm making progress, but the knee is still stiff and very weak. However, pain is minimizing now, probably a 1-3 on a 10 scale.

More to come...