OATS - MACI Sowing my OATS

[ColoradoSnowman]

Hi ColoradoSnowman,
Happy One Month Anniversary!
Hopefully you're feeling a little less tired these days and doing well.
Enjoy the weekend!
@ColoradoSnowman

Yeah I'm feeling considerably better. I rather suspect the culprit was the blood thinners I was on as about 24 hour s after I was was done with the 4 week course, I was feeling much better.

Other than that the OATS recovery is slowwwwwwww. Still in a fixed brace. just nothing to do but wait for the healing to take place. The highlight of the week is that I got to start PT finally. My flexion is >135, strait leg raises, heel slides and quad sets are what I get to do. Hopefully I get the thumbs up from my OP in a couple of weeks to ditch the brace and move on to walking with crutches. I still have high hopes that I will be walking unassisted by 12 weeks.

Other than that, minimal to no pain, just the physical limitation of not being able to bend my knee which makes ambulation and sitting in a chair rather limiting.

Assuming this works I am happy with my choice, but experiencing the scale of physical limitation and temporal scope of recovery, in retrospect I would have given a PKR more serious consideration.

 

[ColoradoSnowman]

6 weeks check in. I just got permission to unlock my brace for use outside the house and take off my brace at home. Over the next week or so I’ll transition to no brace.

First of all it is crazy liberating to be able to walk again after peg legging for 6 weeks. My knee feels a little tight over the incision and a couple moments of discomfort but really other than a slight ache from walking around all day it really doesn’t feel bad at all. A couple of clicks and weird tendon or muscle moving over kneecap feeling events but not pain and they just happen sometimes. Doc says it will take a few days for the new cartilage to get broken in and those knee weirdnesses should pass. I’m hobbling for sure but if I walk slowly enough it isn’t too bad. Of course everything about this recovery is going slow, the PT goal is for me to have a regular gait and be able to do stairs by the end of week 12. I’m hoping to be able to get on a road bike by month 4 and maybe a mountain bike by month 6.

Long long long journey, I go back to work next week, but I work from home so pretty easy to take a break when I need it. Overall the it seems like my experience is less painful than a TKR but disabling for much longer.