Knee recovery UK style Part I
This is my experience:
1. surgeon told me no PT and no formal exercises for the first 3 weeks, just ankle pumps, gentle heel slides and a bit of walking around the house like to the bathroom and kitchen and stuff
2. throughout my recovery I did about 5-10 heel slides maybe 2 or 3 times a week and sat on my exercise bike for a couple of minutes once or twice! Once I was able to do a full rotation I rather lost interest and just used the bike to hang my blankie on!
3. I also dropped to one crutch indoors in week 2 and no crutches in week 3 or 4. Hardly ever used a cane.
4. 3 visits to the physio at weeks 3, 6 and 9 but that was just for assessment when they would eyeball my ROM, ask me how I was and then give me the next appointment!
5. in week 4, started doing little walks outside, starting at about 100yds and increasing bit by bit each day. After two weeks of that (week 6) I think I did a marathon as I got lost in the estate and it took me about an hour to get home. Since I loath walking with a passion, I quickly lost interest in that as well then and never did more than to the bottom of the garden and back!
6. I was doing stairs one at a time for at 3 months if memory serves me correctly. Then I managed to go up normally but it was another several weeks before I could come down normally. I never worried about it, knowing it would happen when it happened and not before.
7. I drove at 6 weeks and never looked back
What I DID do was lots of rest and elevating (hooray for the laptop!), constant icing and always took my pain meds by the clock. In the third week, when I rang my GP in tears because I was inexplicably hurting more than usual, she told me to increase the Tramadol to 150mgs if I wanted as I could take up to 600mgs per 24hrs quite safely and let me tell you, I took advantage of that advice quite often!
My ROM has always been good. Perhaps I was one of the lucky ones but my surgeon says it's a pretty normal story for his patients and he rarely has to do MUAs (which is perfectly true as I worked for him for six years and the number he did in that time you could count on the fingers of one hand!). As it was, I got to 90 two days after surgery, was at 100 by two weeks and 120 before I got to my last PT assessment at 9 weeks. Somewhere around 5 months I was at 135 degrees of flexion and 0 degrees in extension (image 1). Image 2 is my scar at 2½years - 7½".
This is my experience:
1. surgeon told me no PT and no formal exercises for the first 3 weeks, just ankle pumps, gentle heel slides and a bit of walking around the house like to the bathroom and kitchen and stuff
2. throughout my recovery I did about 5-10 heel slides maybe 2 or 3 times a week and sat on my exercise bike for a couple of minutes once or twice! Once I was able to do a full rotation I rather lost interest and just used the bike to hang my blankie on!
3. I also dropped to one crutch indoors in week 2 and no crutches in week 3 or 4. Hardly ever used a cane.
4. 3 visits to the physio at weeks 3, 6 and 9 but that was just for assessment when they would eyeball my ROM, ask me how I was and then give me the next appointment!
5. in week 4, started doing little walks outside, starting at about 100yds and increasing bit by bit each day. After two weeks of that (week 6) I think I did a marathon as I got lost in the estate and it took me about an hour to get home. Since I loath walking with a passion, I quickly lost interest in that as well then and never did more than to the bottom of the garden and back!
6. I was doing stairs one at a time for at 3 months if memory serves me correctly. Then I managed to go up normally but it was another several weeks before I could come down normally. I never worried about it, knowing it would happen when it happened and not before.
7. I drove at 6 weeks and never looked back
What I DID do was lots of rest and elevating (hooray for the laptop!), constant icing and always took my pain meds by the clock. In the third week, when I rang my GP in tears because I was inexplicably hurting more than usual, she told me to increase the Tramadol to 150mgs if I wanted as I could take up to 600mgs per 24hrs quite safely and let me tell you, I took advantage of that advice quite often!

My ROM has always been good. Perhaps I was one of the lucky ones but my surgeon says it's a pretty normal story for his patients and he rarely has to do MUAs (which is perfectly true as I worked for him for six years and the number he did in that time you could count on the fingers of one hand!). As it was, I got to 90 two days after surgery, was at 100 by two weeks and 120 before I got to my last PT assessment at 9 weeks. Somewhere around 5 months I was at 135 degrees of flexion and 0 degrees in extension (image 1). Image 2 is my scar at 2½years - 7½".