TKR FitGal’s Recovery

@FitGal
MUA.....the key word here is “recommend”.....just say no.

You are 5 weeks out for heaven sakes and lacking 2 degrees of flexion and one for extension for the preferred ROM.

Swelling is your enemy. Swelling shall DIE!

Do EVERYTHING you can to get rid of it, and your lacking degrees will be there on Wednesday.

ROM will come when the swelling is gone. You are WonderWoman but even you can’t bend the lead pipe over your knee that is the swelling.

Get rid of the resistance on the bike....set it to zero.....it might cause some swelling.

I am going to suggest doing some massage yourself. I had the PT teach me how and used it a lot to “massage” the swelling up toward my heart between 4-6 weeks. I did it almost whenever I thought about it. I found it kind of soothing.
 
I will be heading back to work again this week, but I am giving myself some limits. I will get there at 6:00am and leave NLT noon! My plan is to work half-days until I start feeling better. Just a few days down helped me feel a lot better after working last week. However, I had a long day today driving my son to perform in a Showcase and feel that some of the pain is coming from driving.... The constant flex of the foot for hour+ at a time does not hurt while I am driving, but hurts when I get home...
Good luck with work Fitgal! Glad to hear you even feel like it, of course be careful. Cheers!
 
Fitgal, I now see I missed one of your posts, about work,, Hope you Are NOT pushing yourself too much. Take care!
 
Though I am sitting a lot at work and in the car, the knee still swells.
Part of the reason for the swelling is all the sitting you're doing. New knees don't like to be in that position for long; eventually it won't bother the knee much, but in the early days it does. That's why we recommend icing and elevating for long periods of time these first few months. I agree with Jockette that you are doing too much and would be better off icing and elevating more this weekend. You also don't need any PT with all the activity already in your daily life, so don't worry that you've "only had 2 PT sessions in 2 weeks".
 
@luvcats and I have discussed biking. I forget if it was her thread or mine or both. Both of us had discomfort. Have you considered just walking instead of biking until you are further along?

After I had my first PKR, my other knee, which also needed to be fixed, did not like the bike at all. My OS told me I could try it, but he strongly recommended walking as the best, especially for getting rid of any limping.

Now that both knees have been repaired, I am walking daily in the shallow end of the pool. Because I wear an Aquajogger belt (invented for Olympic marathon runner Joan Benoit who had knee surgery while prepping for the Olympics and needed to keep jogging—she went on to win another gold), I can move to the deep water and walk, bike, or ski with my legs. Interestingly, on the days I have done the biking, I have pain and swelling after! I do not have either if I stick with the walking, even if I add the skiing motion.

@FitGal
I hope you get a nice rest this weekend!
 
@FitGal I'm going to agree with everyone else that you are doing soooooo much for 5 weeks post op.... It's no wonder your range of motion is affected by the swelling. I'll be 15 wks post-op this coming Tuesday and STILL have issues with swelling from over activity.

My flexion will vary by 10゚ easily based on how much standing, walking, and driving I've done in a day. I have to force myself to elevate "toes above nose" for at least 45 minutes to an hour every day to keep the swelling down. It's not pain that's the problem, but swelling.

I think you will continue to notice limited range of motion until you can find a way to get the swelling down.:hairpulling: I have to constantly remind myself that this is a year long recovery, no matter how quickly I want to be back to normal life. :(
 
Finally at almost 9 weeks the major swelling I've had in my fixed leg just...left. And suddenly my ROM is a lot better, although I don't have the tools to check it myself. Swelling is not something we can 'push through'. Your knee is very, very busy under the surface.
 
Finally at almost 9 weeks the major swelling I've had in my fixed leg just...left. And suddenly my ROM is a lot better
@luvcats - Wow - that is AWESOME! This gives me a bunch of hope!

Tomorrow I will officially be 6 weeks and I'm just bothered by the fact of where I am at in recovery. I started the weekend going hard on trying to improve my ROM for my OS appt on Wed but ending the weekend on this Labor Day determined to just make the knee happy, leaving it make the decisions.

I have been pretty lucky with the pain overall up until recently. On Friday I got a massive jolt of pain through the center-medial side of the knee while standing - it was a zinger on steroids. Then, it happened about two or three more times that day when I wasn't even placing pressure to weight on it. Since, it has remained achy/sore in the same spot. I am hoping it is just part of the recovery....as in my crazy mind, I'm hoping that this pain is all part of releasing the knee to eventually provide me better ROM :heehee:
 
I'm just bothered by the fact of where I am at in recovery. I started the weekend going hard on trying to improve my ROM for my OS appt on Wed but ending the weekend on this Labor Day determined to just make the knee happy, leaving it make the decisions.
@FitGal - The others are all right. You are doing far too much this early in recovery. Your knee has been through major surgery, from which you can't recover in just a few weeks. Like it or not, complete recovery takes a full year. That applies no matter how fit you are, and whether you are 18 or 80.

Your knee is going to recover on its own schedule, not yours. There's nothing you can do to speed that up, but you may slow it down if you consistently overwork your knee, so that its soft tissues become angry and inflamed.
Where are you in recovery?? (TKR)

I'm glad you decided to slow down and not work hard at trying to improve your ROM, becasue working hard often has a negative effect.
Knee recovery - Lose the Work Ethic!!

Whatever your surgeon says, there's no need to rush to get ROM (Range of Motion) because it can continue to improve for a year, or even much longer, after a knee replacement. There isn't any deadline you have to meet:
Myth busting: the "window of opportunity" in TKR

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 is capable of achieving good ROM right from the start, and ROM will gradually increase as your knee heals and its internal and external swelling decrease.
 
@FitGal
FYI, I discuss my knee pain in my PKR thread about my ligament sprain.
 
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@FitGal I'm going through the same exact frustrations, except my ROM seems to be stubbornly staying around 85/8. I go to PT on Thursday this week, so we'll see what happens then. I get why I can't seem to bend it much, it's the straightening that my OS is most concerned about. So I'm slowly trying to stretch my hamstring and calf muscles. A lot of my issues are around how my knee wasn't completely straight for a couple of years prior to surgery and my flexion was barely at 90 pre-surgery. So those muscles are super tight. I'm dreading seeing my OS in a couple of weeks because I don't want to hear the MUA suggestion! He wanted me to be close to 90 degrees at 4 weeks and here we are at 6 weeks without much improvement. The good news is, my knee is getting stronger and I'm not using the cane at all around the house. I can definitely put more weight on it. I worked almost a full day today and had very little swelling, just some typical stiffness when I got home. I also have to fly soon and I'm really nervous, but will make the best of it. We'll get through this! :)
 
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Tomorrow I will officially be 6 weeks and I'm just bothered by the fact of where I am at in recovery. I started the weekend going hard on trying to improve my ROM for my OS appt on Wed but ending the weekend on this Labor Day determined to just make the knee happy, leaving it make the decisions.

You are wise to give the knee a break.

I have had the same issue - pushing to hard and then ending up taking a break for several days until the pain and swelling back off. I have finally set up a priority list for my exercises - gentle stretching to warm up, two ROM exercises such as the heal slides described on this site, and then, if everything has been good - the strengthening exercises. But, what I found is that warm up and ROM are about all my knee can take and not get upset. So I stop after that. I'm not sure I need the strength exercises anyway since my legs were reasonably strong before the surgery and normal daily activities seem to be keeping them that way. So, I rarely do them. And if I do, it's after a rest of several hours from the warm-up and ROM stuff.
 
@Steelergal - you and I will definitely get through this together - just one day apart! Funny, I am flying for a work trip in a little over two weeks, so you will have to let me know how it goes. Glad your leg is getting stronger! I agree that if you can stretch some of your leg muscles and get them to relax, you may find some better ROM numbers esp with your extension. Stretching helped me with the extension part. Still working on flexion. I see my OS tomorrow and will give you an update on what he thinks.

@ApricotPie - thank you and yes, giving the knee some rest has helped a bit.

@marieltha - I will let you know what OS says about medial ligament area pain. Your thread was very interesting!
 
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Just saw the OS! He rocks. No talk of MUA! He also gave me a good exercise to do to help with flexion. He was very happy with current state of the knee. He asked if I had my cell phone with me and we took pictures of my xrays! How cool! He was happy with the look of the leg itself for six weeks - better than most...just need to keep working to get rid of the limp I have. I talked to him about the hip pain and medial pain on knee, he didn’t seem concerned, as he said I have to work in getting quad stronger and stretching muscles to reduce tightness. I see him again in six weeks.
 
PTs need to stop mentioning MUA, look how worried you’ve been for nothing.

I’m glad you have such an encouraging surgeon!
 
PTs need to stop mentioning MUA, look how worried you’ve been for nothing.

Agreed, I'm terrified of MUA. It's like the PTs use it as punishment.

@FitGal This is great news! I'd love to hear about the exercise he gave you to help with flexion. I'll take anything at this point! I see my OS again in a little over a week. I'm anxious to see what he thinks about my progress. I'm so glad you had a good visit and now you can just keep moving forward!
 
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