@Layla Thank you Layla for your kind message. And now the holidays are over, just like that! Hope yours were filled with warmth and happiness.
I have some good news to share. My lasts posts came from a place of anxiety and frustration. I wanted so bad to keep up with my stretching, but the more I tried, the more the IT band pain on the outside of my knee increased. It got to the point I just had to stop entirely and let it heal! When I first started up again, my ROM was pathetic! Hence the frustration and anxiety.
I decided to try another physical therapist, and wow, what a difference!! She listened to what was going on, and really focused on my form. (I had been focused on pointing my toes straight up while doing my exercises, but she said it's the knee that needs to be pointing straight up - the foot then leans outward a bit, which is a more natural position. Changing this took a bunch of the strain off my IT band where it terminates by the knee. Also making sure my knee and hip are aligned, which puts your knees about 8" apart while doing the seated exercises.)
So, with this new info, I have been proceeding more successfully, and in just a couple weeks, my ROM is now 2 degrees extension and 105 flexion!
I saw the PA yesterday and learned something revelatory! For me anyway! And I suspect for many others as well. We often hear about this "3 mos. window" to get our ROM, before the dreaded scar tissue has formed. There has been a lot of anxiety around this, certainly with me! If you don't get acceptable ROM, then MUA is the next step!
This forum has always said, don't worry, ROM will come, and to ignore the 3 mos. myth. I needed more of an explanation to reconcile these seemingly opposing views. And I finally got that after talking to the PA!
This is what has finally been made clear to me; It is in the first 3 months where the greatest gains in ROM are made. You could possibly get a 5 degree increase in 1 week - a big jump! But after 3 mos., these big gains don't tend to happen, instead, gains are on smaller scale. You will still get your ROM, but now it will just take longer.
So, if someone got to 120 degree flexion in 10 weeks, it may take someone else to get there in 10 months.
Gains in ROM does NOT stop after 3 mos.! Maybe all this has been clear for many of you, but it just didn't gel for me until now. (And with the anxiety expressed from so many folks, I suspect I wasn't alone.)
The MUA is needed for people who's ROM is debilitating in that they cannot function well, such as walking. It's used to get them to at least 90 degrees, and it's done within 3 mos. while the tissues are still pliable. In my mind there is still a lot of controversy around MUAs, and you can read a lot about that in the National Library of Medicine website.
So, 105 degrees isn't fantastic, but I can go about my day pretty well. Just knowing ROM will get better over time is something I can easily live with. But here is where it got even more interesting! Apparently, my doctor likes to see a final ROM of about 110 degrees. That sounds a little low for me, but I'll reaccess once I get there.
What they don't want to see, is extreme ROM! Bending the knee too much puts a lot of stress on the artificial joint - the force of the metal on the plastic can damage or break it. They had a patient that was trying to get her heels to touch her butt, and this freaked them out!!
Anyway... I really hope this post in particular helps to clarify your questions and put you at ease!
@Layla or other BoneSmart staff, can you please change my thread's title to "ROM still comes after 3 months".
Thank you.
United States
I would give the pain scale a #2-3, after I've been sitting for a while. Walking itself causes even less if at all. And where it does hurt, is where it has always hurt - the outside of my knee where the thigh muscle terminates at the tendons there. If I am going to be active, I take a Meloxicam and find that helps a lot.
