Hi all, well, I got a 'wife approved' recliner. It's...OK. It stays flat, but it's very hard, and has "wings" on the backrest which contribute to sleep discomfort. But it also keep my feet higher than the prior, which is a good thing. Hopefully within a couple days I'll get used to the firmness and sleep better!
And now....the bad news. Lefty has been much slower than righty all along. Both reached at least 90 ROM within the first week, but lefty hasn't improved much past that. Probably at 120 with righty. Have my first outpatient PT next week so will get a real measurement. But last week, doing some of my limited home PT, I got a sharp pain just below the left knee on the outer side doing my "standing knee flex" exercise- simply bending the knee backward from a standing position (and raising the foot backwards). A day or two after that started, I also started having pain with my lefty chair slides. My follow-up with the doc was in two days, so I shut it down and waited for the exam/advice. Wouldn't ya know, chair slides in the doc's office elicited no pain. So he wrote the script for PT.
I didn't continue the standing flexes, but kept on with the chair slides. A little pain, but not much. Yesterday while simply moving my feet under my desk, I got a pretty bad pain in lefty, but it didn't last long- I just re-positioned the knee and it went away. Had some pain while sleeping last night though. And today...not good. One bend on the steps made me see white. Putting my left sock on....oucharama. Standing up...pain a couple times if I mounted on my left leg first. And even driving...took a turn, and I guess that moved the knee just enough to bring on a really loud scream. And that lasted for a good 15 seconds or so, since, due to limited room under the dash coupled with trying not to crash, I couldn't reposition the knee to a pain-free position for a bit.
I spoke with Dr. Wife (yes, she's a real MD, but family practice, so limited ortho) and she thinks this is pretty common. But I wanted to get your guy's take. The thing that befuddles me is that for the first 4 weeks, everything was going much better with lefty than it is now, and just started going downhill in weeks 5-6. And her visual assessment was actually that lefty looked MUCH better than righty, with regards to swelling.
At my visit last week the doc told me not to get discouraged, but now I'm wondering if I described things well enough vis-a-vis differentiating normal post-op soreness vs. this sudden sharp pain I was feeling. Or maybe he did understand and it's normal and I'm just being a drama king.
Thanks for listening!