Sunday I walked a mile, no cane. Ok, so yesterday, I started outpatient rehab. I feel I’m back to square one now. Pain is a 7, when it had been a 4. Can’t seem to get the swelling down, and sooo tight. I hope I didn’t Really hurt something. Funny thing is, I was able to do the mostly stretches without any pain, and just a little difficulty. Swelled up last evening, and still pretty bad. Well, I still did exercises this morning, and now have been here icing all day. I so wanted to go for a walk. :(
It's pretty obvious that you did too much exercising and that's why your knee is so stiff and swollen.
If you're going to walk for a full mile at only 6 weeks post-op, you don't need to do any more exercising that day. Walking is the best exercise of all for your knee - but not to excess.
You're only 6 weeks into a year-long recovery. There's no need to rush. You have plenty of time. Remember what we told you when we gave you the Recovery Guidelines:
a. If it hurts, don't do it and don't allow anyone - especially a physical therapist - to do it to you
b. If your leg swells more or gets stiffer in the 24 hours after doing it, don't do it again.
It's not exercising that gets you your ROM - it's time. Time to recover, time for swelling and pain to settle, and time to heal. Your knee has the potential to achieve good ROM right from the start, but it's prevented from doing so by swelling and pain. As it heals and the swelling goes down, your ROM (both flexion and extension) will gradually increase.
The therapist seems very knowledgeable, although I’m not quite sure I understand....she said my patella is not sliding you and down, but moving off to the side, and strengthening the muscles around, will help that. Or something to that effect.
Sort of scared me, why would my patella do that ?
So your patella isn't tracking properly yet. That's because the muscles on one side of it are pulling harder than the muscles on the other side. But it's still very early days and as your knee continues to heal, this could cure itself. It's far too early in your recovery to be worrying about it.
Quite honestly, I don't think it's a good idea to go to outside PT. Even with precautions, you will be exposing yourself to the risk of catching Covid-19 - and your resistance to infection is still low, because you're recovering from a major surgery.
Your knee knows what it's doing and it will get all the exercise it needs as you use it in your activities of daily living, plus just a little walking. You can't speed up your recovery by doing exercises, but you might slow it down by overdoing your activity.
Give your knee a break and spend a week or so resting more, and icing and elevating as much as you can, so it can calm down and some of its swelling will decrease.
If you feel you really must do some formal exercises, these are all you need- and only one session per day:
Extension: how to estimate it and ways to improve it
Heel slides and how to do them properly