Two months down!
You were so right that the path of this recovery is NOT a straight line. Luckily, the bad days are no longer as bad as they were.
It’s been a long time since I posted so there’s a lot for me to catch up on.
I was really conflicted about my Physical Therapy sessions. After my second appointment I messaged the OS’s Nurse Practioner and asked what reason there was for the PT to hurt so much. I explained that for two days after each session I couldn’t do any of my at home exercises and was unable to get past the pain.
The answer I received was that it is NOT supposed to leave me in pain and incapacitated, and they’d be happy to call the PT for me.
Since my PT already seemed a bit defensive, I said I’d do the talking and report back to them.
Well, the PT pushed my knee again and I told him I just couldn’t handle that and he had to stop. I also wanted to know WHY this (and the higher tension on the exercise bike) was a good thing for me when it ruined me for days after.
He explained that I’d start to lose ROM and that his pushing on my knee wasn’t hurting me because he could tell how far it would bend. He said the pushing was a “passive” exercise - I said it felt pretty aggressive to me.
Two days later was my first post op appointment with the OS. I went in pretty nervous - either he would tell me that I needed the pain to get better or that the PT was wrong.
Hallelujah!!!
My surgeon said that recent research shows that a self motivated patient doing exercises at home doesn’t need to visit a PT. He said I was progressing beautifully (at that point my ROM was about 123 - extension almost 0).
A week later I had to drive 6 hours away to help my elderly mother move. The drive up wasn’t too bad - I had been feeling really good and made sure to stop and stretch. I had hired packers and movers, but still ended up doing way too much, not sleeping and being VERY stressed out for the 5 days I was there. Every time I had a moment alone, I cried.
I’ve been back home almost a week now and have started to feel a bit better. I’m back to doing the prescribed exercises. I’m supposed to keep a log of them on the App my surgeon had me download. Don’t tell anyone, but when I’ve done a lot of walking or just feel to tired and achy, I check off the exercises as completed. (Usually I do at least two of the three daily sessions.
I take pictures of my bent knee and it seems to be improving but without my sadistic PT and his device I can’t be sure.
(Sorry to bore you all with so many details, but I thought I’d want to look back on this later.)
As it happens, I have two questions for the group.
1. My post op X-ray showed that I have “small periarticular heterotopic ossification along the medial aspect of the medial femororobital compartment and popliteal region”
I googled the words - it seems that this describes bone growing outside the skeleton- I think.
I asked the Nurse Practitioner about this - she said they were very small and nothing to worry about right now. (Right now?! - what does that mean?!)
I guess there is a second part to this question - Why can’t these medical teams just EXPLAIN what is going on? It seems that all my questions about pain management, PT and medical terms are brushed aside as if I couldn’t possibly be made to understand what they’re doing!
OK, sorry, enough of that.
2. Today at the grocery storeI took a bit of an awkward step back and to the side. I felt as if my new knee started to slip out of place - like it used to when I had a torn ACL ligament. No pain, swelling or loss of balance, but it did freak me out a bit.
Has anyone experienced something like this? Could it just be my out of shape muscles?
Now I’m going to take some time to see how all of you are doing....
United States
Just some gentle bending and stretching, and a bit of walking, is all you really need. Of course, if you do certain exercises and feel great with doing them, that's worth continuing. But avoid that step machine.
When people in person told me to do all my PT, I just smiled and nodded. 
