Jockette, I am so genuinely sorry that you went through that!
How awful that must have been. And sistersinhim, you too!
Deep in the bottom of my heart I feel for both of you. Those PT people should never have done that to you.
OK, here's how PT went:
When we first got there I was SO intimidated! All these young, fit, PT's, and none of the patients had walkers or canes or anything. It was like a parade of "the beautiful people" or something.
They were working out on treadmills, stationary bikes, knee press machines, and other terrifying looking equipment. As we sat there waiting (we were early), I muttered to my sweetie, "This looks awful. They are NOT going to do ONE THING to me that I object to. Not one thing!! If they do then I'm marching out of here and never coming back!!!!!"
(see? I do take what you all say very seriously).
Then a young, fit girl came to get me started and we went back into her office. I told her politely, kindly, but firmly and in no uncertain terms how bad my knee had been, how I had been sitting in a chair for years, about the torn meniscus and hopping with that leg on its tiptoes and no more than 5 pounds on it since May and so on. I firmly told her that I needed encouragement and compassion, not pushing, and that she must realize that I am starting at a very low level as probably the least capable new patient they ever had.
Now here's the surprise: she listened and took me seriously! She had me doing easy things that were reasonable for me. Also on almost all of the exercises she let ME decide how much to bend my knee and so on, not her. We did heel stretches, but I was the one holding the strap. I was on a stationary bike using my good leg to stretch my knee (which of course can't go all the way around) and she let ME decide how hard to push it. When she measured my ROM, she let ME decide how far to bend my knee, not her. I thought that was pretty cool.
I feel like I was pretty good at figuring out how much to bend or straighten my knee since it's my knee. I think I did both of these things just the right amount and no more. I do want to stretch those muscles and soft tissues a little to encourage them to lengthen, so that I eventually can straighten that leg. Right now I have 85 degrees of flexion, and 17 degrees of extension. My knee was extremely swollen today due to not icing this morning, and she (not me!) commented on that and pointed out that as the swelling dies down, I'll get better ROM values. Was that cool or what! I thought so anyway.