PKR My Drama Queen Patellofemoral Knee

[Jockette]

@Fire wolf
No, you did not imply that I'm doing something wrong. I did not take it that way. Your posts, both on your thread in general and your words to me have been very encouraging. I love that you call your knee by name and your positive and humorous posts. Yes there are struggles and down moments but I have always enjoy your upbeat posts!

But I truly realize my attitude has not been good. I'm going to work on that.

I have never understood the theory "happiness is a choice". To me it is a feeling and I don't know how to control my feelings. However, I can choose to smile, as that is not a feeling. So I will take to heart putting a smile on my face. And when friends ask how I am, the new answer will be "good!" with a smile! It's bound to become a feeling, don't you think?

I actually was very encouraged last Tuesday when my chiropractor did some kind of muscle release around the back of my knee and I had quite a bit more relaxed movement in my knee. It lasted about 2 days, got a little tighter again, but not to the point it was before she did it. So she will keep doing that for me until it stays relaxed.

And, my husband and I took a ride yesterday, just to go out. We were out for about an hour, and while sitting in the car I gently pulled my foot closer to me and kept it there for a while, relaxed it and did it again, and I had a bit more rom when I got home. I was encouraged by that.

A better attitude is helped when one can at least see a bit of progress!

Thanks for caring!

 

[Fire wolf]

I have never understood the theory "happiness is a choice". To me it is a feeling and I don't know how to control my feelings. However, I can choose to smile, as that is not a feeling.

You are absolutely correct that feelings are feelings and therefore hard to control, and that you can chose what you do. So brief psych lesson that hopefully can help: Our thoughts, feelings and behaviors are all interconnected, with each affecting the other. Making a change in one of those 3 will create change in the others as we like to stay *in balance* with everything on the same page, so to speak.

Due to the nature of feelings, they cannot be changed as directly as thoughts and behaviors, but they can be changed indirectly by changing thoughts and behaviors so that they reflect and ultimately change how we feel. So when you do things like smile, even when you don't feel happy, eventually the feeling of happy will come. If you tell yourself positive things, eventually the feeling changes to positive as well.

So see, you know exactly what to do to change your feelings, you just didn't know that you did! I am glad that my posts have been helpful to you as well!

 

[Jockette]

@Fire wolf
So I was out today with friends, I smiled a lot and when asked about my knee I said, in a positive voice, "it's good" . And I had a great time.

It actually did feel better today anyway!

 

[Fire wolf]

So glad to hear that you had a good day out with some friends!

 

[JJ65]

@Jockette so glad you had a day out with friends... that is wonderful !!!

 

[Jockette]

@Celle Marynana07 mentioned that at PT she laid on her stomach and bent her leg up towards her.

It reminded me that that is a position that the X-ray tech put me in at my 4th month check up. I did not like it, she wasn't actually rough but not gentle either. Then she pulled the machine to my foot to hold it there while she left to take the X-ray. I don't remember them requiring this position at other appointments.

What is your opinion on that? It was fairly uncomfortable. Is that something I should let them do, for the sake of an X-ray, or refuse it, in the future.

 

[Celle]

Well, I've had three knee replacements and I've never had to be X-Rayed in that position. Maybe it was a special view that your surgeon requested, but I don't think it's a good idea if done routinely.

 

[Jockette]

OK, thanks. We'll see what happens next month at my 7 month check. I am not looking forward to it.

This afternoon my knee is so achy. Sometimes rain does that but not always. Though not close to shore, and even downgraded, I wonder if it is because Jose is passing by Delaware today. We've only had mild rain and it has stopped.

 

[Jockette]

Just bumping this up so you can see the picture of my elevating wedge on page 2.

 

[Jockette]

@Josephine
The release technique thing my chiropractor did last week that gave me an immediately freer feeling in my knee did not go as well when she did it this week. My knee was not happy at all several hours later. It was raining and I'd gone out to the store so maybe that was more the issue later that day.

It's been 2 days now since the treatment. The back of my leg is very tight. Mostly the back of the calf and a small section above the knee on the back of the thigh, and it's actually been like this for weeks.

Sometimes it feels like something inside my leg passes over in front of the knee, making it very hard to bend, even just the normal, slight bend involved in walking. Icing and elevating over night seems to fix this, but not the tightness in the back of the leg.

I have wondered about an IT issue, but I don't have any discomfort on the outside of my leg, just behind it.

But I wonder if my lack of rom is not due to the knee replacement itself, but rather due to this tightness in the back of the leg.

I wonder if I did more damage than I thought when I was visiting friends for the weekend in July and having extreme difficulty getting on and off their low toilet during the 3 days I was there. While I don't have "ouchy" pain, could I have strained something that will just take a long time to heal?

OR am I worrying needlessly and need to just relax and let time be my friend?

 

[Josephine]

Well, let's start at the beginning - can you tell me the site of your pain(s) using this chart

 

[Jockette]

@Josephine
The tightness is:
LB4 LB3- C and F and G

There is a pocket of swelling at
LF 4. D.
Not a major amount of swelling but the last spot to go away. It doesn't even look much different from my other knee. But it's the first area that I feel when the knee is not happy. When the knee is very unhappy there is discomfort in this spot as well as next to it in the center of the picture.

Then there are the times that it just feels like something has moved in front of the knee, center front, and it's very hard to bend but not painful, just awkward. Like something is out of place. Resting/sleeping all night fixes it. But the fact that it happens concerns me.

 

[Canada35]

@Jockette Hugs to you! I hope your X-ray relieves your concerns and you can just hang out with the rest of us slow benders. It is a tough road but we will all make it down eventually.

 

[Jockette]

@Canada35 I was actually able to bend a little better a little while ago! I go by the lines on the floor of the bathroom and was able to move my heal further back past a certain line for the first time. Amazing how exciting that was!

 

[Jockette]

@Josephine I forgot to mention that I have a new pain in my thigh at the center between LF3 and LF4 A which started last week when I go up a step. I live in a one story house so I don't do steps at home and have only occasionally tried going up the PKR leg if the step is a short one, and it always feels really weird when I do.

Last week I stepped up on the top step of a more regular height step and about 5 minutes later I had a deep ache of a pain in that area. It flared and settled and repeated that pattern for about 10 minutes then stopped.

I have some short steps in front of my house so the last few days I am going up them, to get used to doing steps. One step and I feel that ache in the thigh. Yesterday I did 2 steps where I stepped up on the PKR side and I had that ache on and off for about 45 minutes.

I would think I would be healed enough at 6 months to handle these short steps. Does it hurt because I haven't done many steps up with the PKR yet? Should I continue to do them or wait longer and try again?

I only have this particular ache in this location after I have stepped up on the PKR leg and it only started after going it on a higher step last week. The occasional time I've done this in the past in my recovery did not cause this ache.

"Normal" for recovery?

 

[Canada35]

Awesome! Some days I am able to bend farther than others. Some days it's hard to get past 90 degrees but I have high hopes that in time, I will get and keep at least 115. I figure I can do most things at that bend. I know it's hard not to worry but I find the more anxious I am the less Nellie wants to bend!

 

[Jockette]

I agree! I did wonder how much stress affects our knee. And not just worrying about the knee, but some of the other things in life that upset us.

And I am very sensitive and worry too much about others opinions (especially my surgeon) and that is hard to overcome.

But today is a good day!

 

[Jockette]

And just this quickly my knee is all tight again. I must have encouraged it more than it wanted. I doubt I could reach that line in the bathroom right now.

 

[Polkadot]

Hi, Jockette,
You said you might start walking more, but that the driveways in your neighborhood make it harder to walk there. You find the flat surfaces in stores easier to navigate. Before I started having issues with my knees, I had worked up to walking about 6-7 miles a day, sometimes all at once, sometimes in two sessions. Then my knees "went." Looking back, I believe that the surfaces I walked on exacerbated the problems in my knees. We live in a longish-winter area, and I moved indoors to do mall-walking when the weather became cold. Not only is that one of the hardest (as in soft vs hard) surfaces to walk or stand on, it also is highly polished. My feet would slide and rotate a bit with every step, and every time I struck the floor with my foot, it was jarring. (Again, this is hindsight, but my husband is a runner and was given similar advice when his joints started bothering him.)

I'd like to suggest that you consider planning the surfaces you begin walking on, in order to be the most gentle you can to your knee. (You have already found that slopes are not easy.) I've determined that it is worth it to drive a ways to get to a good surface, even if I only walk for 15 minutes. I discovered a park with flat trails a few miles from our house. It has a combination of crushed-limestone trails and soft black-tarred ones. The back trails, for when I up my game and lengthen my walk (fingers crossed!), are mown grass and tamped down due to lots of use. My husband and I have also recently driven just a couple of miles to the outskirts of town and have walked on sleepy dirt roads. Just watch out for the occasional farm implement!

Another place I like is the running track around the football field at our local high school. Lots of people walk and run there. I can even leave my jacket and car keys on the bleachers, and they are still there when I'm done!

In the winter, I will drive 20 minutes to our university and walk indoors on one of their walking/running tracks.

I will still go shopping, but if I am walking any distance, I'll try to stick to carpeted areas as much as possible and avoid the hardest floors. For example, JC Penney has carpeted areas under all their racks of clothing. Instead of walking on the hard aisle floors, I weave my way through the racks of clothing. I think this is much kinder to both knees and other joints.

So my order of hardness, from Avoid to Love, is:

1. Mall floors made of marble or something similar
2. Big-box store floors made of cement or hard tile, like Lowes or Wal-Mart
3. Sidewalks and hard concrete streets (I walk in our street, which is black and is softer than the sidewalk, if I have to "do" our subdivision. It's a very sleepy subdivision, so safe.) If I have to, I choose grass over sidewalk.
4. Streets made of softer substances, typically black vs grey in our area
5. Outdoor trails and pathways made of crushed limestone, shredded bark, packed dirt, etc.
6. Outdoor/indoor running/walking tracks: our YMCAs have them inside, but they are small, so you feel like a hamster on a wheel. The tracks at the university in their athletic facilities are larger, so you don't have to go around as many times. Much more pleasant. Worth checking out, because I found that walking is free there, whereas if you want to use the university exercise equipment, there's a fee!

 

[Jockette]

@Polkadot Thank you for those thoughts! I agree surface is very important. My husband stopped walking our neighborhood because it hurt his back, yet in a store and pushing a cart it's better for him. He felt it was the surface of the street. He started using the treadmill in our community's clubhouse and did well on that surface. At the moment I am terrified of a treadmill, because the surface is always moving.

I like your idea of a university and its track. We have a couple very close to us.
We will have to look into that.