Knee update-10 weeks
Wednesday marked ten weeks since my knee surgery and the healing continues. After the first couple of weeks I could see definite improvements from week to week until I got to about seven weeks. Now the improvements are pretty subtle and sometimes it feels like I am going backwards from where I was earlier.
The incision has healed quite nicely and looks pretty good considering it’s only been a bit more than two months so far. I still believe it will be barely visible once it fades. I had an x-ray done and saw the surgeon last Friday. He says the bone is mending nicely and I am doing fine. BUT…it’s still pretty early days in the grand scheme of things so I shouldn’t get too frustrated at the slow progress.
I’d succeeded in getting full range of motion for my knee within the first four weeks and since then have been working on building up the muscles, of which there seem to be so many. Sometimes I feel like I am doing quite well but then run into problems when trying to use muscles that are still weak. Â I am doing better with my walking but still find myself limping at times. This is particularly true when I’ve tired myself out so it possibly is a matter of working out my own limits. I saw my physiotherapist this afternoon and she said I can walk or ride the stationery bike as long as is comfortable. I’d already been pushing beyond the original times she’d given me anyway, so I guess that will be okay…just that I have a bad habit of overdoing it sometimes and put myself at more risk of injury.
The night before my appointment with the surgeon, I started having knee pain again where it had been mostly absent for several weeks. I’d been having sporadic pains before but they usually only lasted for a few seconds and then I was fine. I mentioned the pain to the surgeon and he asked me a lot of questions about it. I was feeling okay by that time so I wasn’t too worried about it. It’s been more of a problem over the past week but I managed to avoid medication until last night, after what amounted to a particularly difficult day of trying to walk and not doing very well at it. I’d gone to a shopping mall for an hour or so and left with legs that felt much like jelly. It had been raining and the tread on my shoes was worn so I walked much like I’d have walked on an icy surface…and wore myself out really quickly. I’ve also experience my knee buckling more often than I’d like and that another mental factor last night that created more of a physical issue than I’d started out with.
The physiotherapy is going okay but it’s often hard to remember to do everything as many times and as often as I should. My physio stopped me doing mini-squats and switched me to a modified lunge instead. I’d been doing the mini squats for three weeks and still found they were hurting so I’m hoping the lunges will work better for me. I’m also to practice walking up and down stairs more. I apparently should be able to handle them with ease but I find it too difficult most of the time.
Today I was feeling rather adventurous and took one of the dogs out for a walk for the first time since surgery. It’s been a while since either has been out on a walk so I was kind of prepared to deal with some unsociable behavior. Overall it went reasonably well. Lots of nuisance barking and an attempted attack on a dog running loose. I spent much of the time correcting him so my very slow pace came in handy. Weather-permitting, I plan to do another walk tomorrow and keep working on the behavior problems. Fun stuff.
