Days 1 and 2 of PT

Yesterday (Monday), I started Physical Therapy. The first thing they wanted to do was to check my range of motion so they can track that on a daily basis. I had been to one appointment about a week before surgery to set somewhat of a baseline. During that visit, I was able to get my knee extended to about 1 degree of hyperextension. On my good knee, I could get about 10 degrees of hyperextension. To check the hyperextension, they have you sit on a table with your legs in front of you and your ankle on a small towel roll and flex your quad muscle so that you get the back of your knee as close as you can to the table. They didn't use the towel for my injured knee, because they don't really want you to hyperextend your injured knee until it is stronger, but they do want you to be able to get it completely flat to the table (or 0 degrees). I was able to do 0 degrees yesterday and today, so that is good.

The next thing he checked was my range of motion, or how far I could bend my knee. On my good knee, I could get to about 143 degrees and on my injured knee, I was at about 120 degrees during my post-op visit. Yesterday, my flexion was only 107 degrees, but the therapist said that is very good for only being four days out of surgery. Today, I was at 115 degrees, so I'm making some progress. At 120 degrees, the doctor will often clear you to ride the stationary bike as soon as the staples and stitches are out, so hopefully I'll be doing that by the end of the week.

The rest of the time with the therapist both yesterday and today was spent doing various leg lifts, calf raises and mini-squats (holding the edge of a table and squatting down about six or eight inches, then standing back up). I'm supposed to be doing a lot of quad strengthening exercises whenever I can too.

Finally, the therapist worked with me on my walking - with crutches for now. I'm still wearing the brace when I'm walking around, mainly for stability, but I'm trying to simulate as close to a normal walking motion as possible. It takes a lot of pressure off my shoulders and upper arms to be able to use both legs again, so I'm pleased with that. The tradeoff is that now that I'm doing all this work with my bad leg, my swelling has increased pretty significantly. When I saw the therapist today and told him about this, he did not seem concerned, though he added that it all depends on whether the swelling is inhibiting your range of motion, so as long as I keep on moving, the swelling will eventually subside. It seems a little counter-intuitive, since my natural inclination is to stop moving a joint when it feels stiff, but apparently in this case, the constant movement is critical to getting the stiffness out of the joint. The good news is, my pain is way down from where it was over the weekend. I have cut way back on the narcotic pain killers and I'm using more Ibuprofen now, which should also help reduce the swelling.

All in all, it has been a good start to therapy, though I'm looking forward to Thursday when I see the surgeon again and hopefully get a better idea of when I can return to activities like driving and maybe getting in the pool to get some aerobic exercise (since I can't do running)...