Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Surgery Recovery - Day 12

My leg was aching again last night. The same shin and thigh discomfort that keeps me up every night. On the plus side I managed to find a position that didn't hurt my back so much: Setting the pillow up so it's perpendicular to me and putting both legs on it really helped. Unfortunately I still only slept for a few hours because of the pain.

I had my first PT appointment today. Nicole, the PT person, did an evaluation and then messed around a bit with the knee. She bent it as far as it would go (35 degrees) which felt absolutely disgusting, then she stretched both my legs.

Finally she had me stretch my legs out on the bench while I was sitting up and told me to try and lift up my leg. I couldn't pick my leg up off the bench even a centimeter! I wasn't able to make the muscles contract one bit(or there weren't any muscles). Nicole said this was relatively normal and that it will improve as we continue to work on it. She also gave me exercises to do - a number of stretches, heel slides to improve the bending range of my knee and quad presses (basically concentrating on pressing down into the floor with the muscles I don't seem to have or at minimally don't have the ability to contract).

After all the exercises were done she put these electro-pad thingies on my knee for electrical stimulation - it felt like very small little jets of water where the pads of the device went and over this she put an ice pack. The electric stimulation lasted for 10 minutes and then I was done for the day.

My knee is really really sore and swollen from PT. I scheduled two more appointments this week because I was supposed to do three according to my doctor, but that means I'm going two days in a row. I don't know if I can do that. I guess I will wait and see how bad the knee is tomorrow before I cancel Thursday's appointment.

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