Hello
@Mamie - and welcome to recovery.
I've started this recovery thread for you.
Please continue to post about your recovery in this thread, which is yours now. Can you bookmark it, so you don't lose it.
If you need help doing things on BoneSmart, we have a whole section with helpful articles about how to do things. It's here:
How To Use This Forum
I won’t lie to you, this surgery is the one from hell but I believe it’s PT that expects so much. When sitting I can force my knee with tremendous pain but get to 90 degrees.
This surgery should not be one from hell. Things have changed a lot since your first knee replacement, back in 2005.
Please stop forcing your knee to bend. That is quite unnecessary and very bad for it. It's not necessary to do any exercises that are painful. A gentler, kinder way of recovering will produce much better results, and far less pain.
Whatever your PT therapists tell you, 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
In any case, 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.
I believe it’s PT that expects so much.
Let me set you straight about PT. It's your knee and you are in charge of what happens to it. You are the only one with the right to say what happens to it. You are the boss. You don't have to please your PTs. They have to please you.
You have the absolute right to say you won't do painful exercises or allow them to push on your knee, so stop torturing yourself with painful exercises.
Saying no to therapy - am I allowed to?
Follow our recommendations in the recovery guidelines I'll give you in my next post and you will have a much more comfortable, and still successful, recovery.