You have a wise therapist.
An important part of a good recovery is allowing your brain to give over the control of your healing to your own body. We mean it when we say that everyone’s recovery is unique. Your body has its own time clock for these things and you cannot force or worry it into hurrying up. In fact (as you’ve found), that can often make things worse.
Don’t try to wean off pain meds too soon. If you are hurting, you need to take whatever relieves it best (at the lowest level, of course). Taking pain medications on a set schedule whether you hurt or not is best. That way you always have medicine in your system to deal with any pain that pops up. If you wait until you begin to hurt to take the meds, you have to play catch up and it actually takes more of your medication than if you just took it on a schedule. Your medication of choice can be a prescription pain med like the oxy, a step down prescription for something not quite as strong like Tramadol, or Extra Strength Tylenol taken in 1000mg doses.
Also, please keep using the cane until you are really strong enough not to need it. It’s a temporary aid, but using it allows your body to maintain proper alignment and movement as you get stronger. When you try and stop using it too soon, you will hesitate with your gait or worse…limp. This does you no good and actually slows your recovery.
Yes, your knee looks great from the outside, but there is still a lot of healing inside yet to go. And there is even more that must happen for your soft tissues to strengthen and stretch into your new body alignment. This surgery impacts your whole body and there are many things that must adjust and then strengthen. Your body will set this schedule for you. Your job is to give it the grace needed to heal properly.
You can do this. Your current ROM is great. The hardest part is always maintaining your patience with the process.
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Wishing you lots of comfort.
