5 Weeks after Surgery

January 25, 2006 and I am now 5 weeks after surgery.

I have stopped taking the Alleve and my knee is not swelling anymore than the little bit around the knee. That will just take a while to go down. I am not getting any increased swelling after I do my physical therapy or exercises at home.

I rode my bike (on the trainer) today for 15 minutes and I am pedaling quite fast. I have come a long way since the first day that my physical therapist let me get on the bike. When I am on the bike, it feels like nothing is wrong with my knee.... it feels great!

I am now walking up and down the stairs with one foot per stair. It is not completely smooth, but I am able to go up and down almost normally. I actually am doing better on the stairs than I am with getting my walk back to normal. The one thing that I still have an issue with on the stairs is my quad control when I am going down the stairs.

I am still limping a bit when I walk. I am having a really hard time lifting my foo t up behind me. That is the action that you need to use when you walk. I can march just fine, but the kicking off the back when walking is still hard. We are working on that in physical therapy.

A couple of days ago, I wore a pair of loafers with a half inch heel, and my calf and leg was really tired the next day. I thought that I could wear a loafer with a tiny heel, but apparently not!

I am doing a lot of different exercises, some with my physical therapist, and some at home. At physical therapy, we have been working on my walking, and so we are doing marching, walking backwards, walking with tiny steps, putting a band around both legs at the knee and moving sideways to the right and then sideways to the left. Then, working on the quad muscle, I am doing quad contractions, and leg raises while lying down. For my hamstrings, I am doing an exercise where I put my feet on an exercise ball, while lying down with my legs fully extended. Then lift by butt up and holding that position, working the hamstrings. Then, in the same position, bending my knees and bringing the ball close to my butt. Both of those exercises work the hamstrings.

For balance, I am using an exercise band wrapped around my good leg and a pole. Then, standing on my bad leg, I am extending out my right leg increasing the tension on the exercise band.... This makes my bad leg (left) work on the balance, while my right leg is engaged in activity. Another balance exercise is to stand on a balance platform with my left leg, and balance for 30 seconds and then repeat a couple of times. It is easy for the first 30 seconds, but by the time I get to the 3rd set, my leg gets really tired.

At physical thearpy, there is this machine that they refer to as the monster. When hooked up to the monster, you can make your leg work in isolated exercises and measure the force that your leg is working.... in addition, you can work on controlling your muscles....don't ask me how it works... but it does.

I am still doing the killer heel slides, which are not so much of a killer anymore. I am able to slide my heel almost up to my butt. I am also doing squats, but in a very limited way. I am ready to increase the squats. Oh, and I just added weight to my leg raises today. I put on a 1 pound weight.

The physical therapy appointments are about 1.5 hours now... they used to be just 1 hour, but there is more to do now.

At home, it takes me between 1 hour and 1.5 hours to complete all of the exercises.