Guest viewing is limited

TKR Post op ROM

I'm going to go at this slightly differently. I'm a Kansas gal and see your from Kansas. We are tough working hardy stock work hard and see results kind of people. I think that's what is happening here. Personally I think your allowing everyone to mess with your head - if you don't do this, that's gonna happen. So you've pushed and pushed your baby knee and its not happy. (I've been there and done it myself.)

As an experiment temporally stop going to PT for say 3 weeks. In those 3 weeks ride the bike no more than 10 minutes at a time. Focus on walking / gait, period. Along with icing and elevating daily, several times. I'm thinking your pain level will lessen, your swelling should lessen and you'll be a happier camper. Now that's just my thinking - what you must realize is your in charge of your recovery, not the PT. Take a deep breath and relax.
 
@eaglemom

Thank you on your advise! And yes, you are very correct on letting people get into my head messing with it. I am to trusting I suppose. Looking at your record on knee surgeries, I would say you REALLY know what you are talking about, wow! I will try your plan, and let you know how it is going. On the other hand, you take care of your poor knees, you have been through many battles.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This recovery has an added stress level from all the negative and conflicting comments and advice we get. Sometimes it’s so hard to know what to believe.
 
I'm just watching Judge Judy, and she just said something relevant to what some PTs tell us:

" If it doesn't make sense, it's probably not true"
 
markbet said:
I guess my question was, at what point after surgery does adhesions occur?
Click to expand...

I think the answer is "almost never, as long as you keep the joint moving by gentle exercises"

When I had my first TKR, the hospital dug out an old cpm machine for one lady who refused to move her joint, and hadn't got out of bed for 6 weeks. I think she would have eventually developed adhesions.
 
I see now that I should have read the "recovery guidelines" that was provided to me in the beginning. Just about any and all questions I had and have was answered in these various articles. I do apologize for this.
 
It seems like you’re being so hard on yourself and I know you’re very frustrated. I keep hearing from many sources how we all recover from the surgery at different rates. When my PT measures flexion and extension, they always emphasize how it’s important for me to do the movement and not them. One exercise that helped me was putting a roll under both legs to elevate my heels slightly and let gravity do its thing by straightening up my leg. After several minutes it can get uncomfortable but it’s slowly stretches out the back of the leg. Another thing that seemed to help me was hamstring stretches, while lying down. And I too have a recumbent bike and was told by the PT to stick to only 10 minutes twice a day. Best wishes to you, take it slowly and gently.
 
All this aggressive and bullyboy tactics and scaremongering from your PT is so wrong, when your knee is fully healed ( including the invisible layers underneath the incision) this I've since learnt can take up to a year or so ( confirmed by my surgeon) the swelling will disappear and the Rom will normal itself, at the moment with this aggressiveness your knee is fighting to heal itself.
I only had PT almost two weeks after my surgery initially I was sent home with a few gentle exercises, was told to rest and let my knee heal, my weekly PT sessions were always gentle and my Portuguese Therapist greatly believed in the BoneSmart approach, I was discharged from PT just after 3 months and told to mainly concentrate on my posture and to walk tall using heal to toe and to stop worrying about numbers as Rom & extension will come at their own pace eventually, I was also recommended not to kneel for at least 12 months as this causes a lot of pressure on the inner layers healing.
Now just past 4 months I've seen a lot of improvement in my knee I'm walking far better, I have no idea what my Rom or extension are, nor does this bother me as on the whole I'm able to what I need to.
Stop worrying yourself, give yourself time to heal after all this was major surgery xx
 
Tykey said:
When I had my first TKR, the hospital dug out an old cpm machine for one lady who refused to move her joint, and hadn't got out of bed for 6 weeks. I think she would have eventually developed adhesions.
Click to expand...
Not moving the joint will not cause adhesions. We’ve had members in immobilizer braces for weeks after TKR, for certain reasons, and they did not get adhesions.
bonesmart.org

MUA (Manipulation under Anaesthetic) and adhesions

First let me first put your mind at rest - this is quite probably nothing to do with not having done enough PT or been 'good enough' in following orders. Here is my standard mini-lecture on the subject so read and absorb ... All the structures in the body, muscles, tendons, ligaments, even gut...
bonesmart.org bonesmart.org
 
I wore an immobilizer twice for 6-8 weeks and I didn't get adhesions. Overworking a knee is much more likely to cause adhesions.
 
Another way to look at the advice your "Doctor of Physical Therapy" is giving you is to ask yourself if YOUR therapist is smarter than every other PT. If he's right, does that mean all the other PTs who give "gentle" TKR therapy are wrong? They can't be because many many TKR patients heal fine without aggressive PT.

For this reason, I agree they get in our head and prey on our fear (even if they're not doing it intentionally). It's what they're taught, and people tend to stick to what they learned, even if 15-20 yrs have gone by. My surgeon and another younger PT told me last summer that the PT schools are coming around to the gentler way of rehabbing TKRs. There must be a good reason for that, right????!!!! :thankyou: They're just finally teaching what most of us here discovered in other ways....and the research is FINALLY beginning to prove that "gentler is often better".
 
Yep, undoubtedly, this is by far the most frustrating thing I have EVER experienced! March 4th, marks my 3 month post op anniversary. The only thing I can say that this knee does on a consistent basis, is SWELL. I look at it wrong and it swells, I baby it, it swells, I'm beginning to think it is possessed, and have a exorcism preformed on it. Most of the time, it feels like the surgeon hacked out my knee, then ran down to Cosco and bought a 15 pound brisket, and stuffed it in my leg where a knee used to reside. I did take about two weeks off of PT to give my knee a rest. I restart PT on March 6 on once a week schedule. Hopefully soon my knee will turn the corner, for the better, so I can start leading a normal life.
 
Last edited:
@markbet Are you still icing that knee? Three months is still early days in what can be a year long recovery. Hang in there - normal life returns but only when that knee is ready.
 
@Jaycey

I do ice some, but I think I am going to have to step it up on that. I know everyones knee is different, but I have a friend that had a TKR the first of October, he called me a week ago and wanted to know if I would be interested in going mountain bike riding with him! I said, really? I can barely walk let alone ride a real bike. I was in such high hopes of not being a statistic, on not recovering as fast many do. But I also realize a quick recovery is not in the cards, and I will have to deal with it, I don't have a choice in the matter.
 
Indeed every TKR is different - even on the same person. Ice for 45-60 minutes several times per day. I think you will see major improvement if you can get that swelling under control.
 
There is one other issue I have noticed after my TKR, I have places on my knee and shin that are numb. I can rub my leg and there is no feeling in spots, especially just below the knee, it is an uneasy feeling. Will being numb go away with time, or is this something I will have to endure forever? My OS seems to have left out some of the storyline on this surgery on what to expect afterwords.
 
It’s normal and the numbness should mostly diminish to the point you are hardly aware of it. And I agree, they hardly tell us anything about what to expect in recovery.
 
"Endure" seems a bit negative, especially for you

My 10 year old knee is still numb on the outside, and I love it!!!
What's the pleasure of bumping into the coffee table and having pain?
My new knee is also numb on the outside of it and I hope the feeling never returns.

Any road up, Jockette is right, you'll forget it anyway, except you'll remember it with a smile when the coffee table attacks.
 
Last edited:
Both of my knees have numb spots because of all the surgeries. It doesn't bother me at all. It's something that you get used to. If they're numb, they don't hurt!
 
I see TKR's and three year olds don't mix very well. We live out in the country, and our front yard is two acres. I made the mistake of taking advantage of the wonderful weather yesterday and allowed our visiting grandson to go outside. Not thinking, he is going to take full advantage of this very large area and run, and it was me with a 3 month old TKR to "try" and keep up with him! Didn't work too well, and boy did I pay the price for it that evening, my knee was so swollen, I could barely bend it. I kept ice on it most of the night, but even this morning, my knee is still chewing me out about the abuse yesterday. I will try and do my recumbent bike this morning, but I have little hope I can even make a revolution on it. So putting ice on it while doing nothing is probably my knee's plan, it seems to rule over the rest of me, it IS the boss!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Active Antimicrobial Hydrogel
Corganics CBD

Staff online

Members online

Total: 2,084 (members: 2, guests: 2,082)

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom