Range of Motion continues

Six weeks and two days post op

And now we're onto week six of this ever-exciting adventure in knee surgery land! Welcome, boys and girls!

Let me think, what happened in the last week. Well, for one, I went hiking in the Canadian Shield. Yes, that's right. I traipsed up and down through the rocks on a two hour hike. I can't say it was easy - I had to go very slowly, particularly when descending, and my left leg felt it the next day because I depended quite a lot on it to climb up things, but hey, I did it! I twisted my right knee oddly once and feared for my graft but all seems fine.

Yesterday at physiotherapy I had good news and bad news. I'll start with the good. I have 135 degrees of bend!!! That's a mere five off from normal! Wow! And we weren't even really pushingit to its max when it was measured. How sweet it is to be almost normal. The other good news is that my physio had me walk across the room for him. I did that no problem. Then he had me JOG across the room for him. And I did it too! It was the first time I'd tried jogging and it was no big deal. I've since jogged a couple of times here or there, like through the halls of my condo on my way to the garbage shute, for example. It feels good.

My bad news is that my extension, which is supposed to be zero degrees and which was zero the first time I went to physio so I figured it must still be, is off by two degrees. I now feel like I must straighten that bad boy out. Extension is very important, so they say. My physiotherapist was less concerned about it that I was.

The other day I decided enough is enough. I'm sick of limping down the stairs. So I've been taking the stairs down whenever possible and working hard on using the muscles required to do so normally. I believe it's the quads that really deal with descending. I think in the two days that I've been making this conscious effort I've started to feel an improvement, though it's still quite slow going.

I went to body pump today and actually put a bit of weight on for the squatting section. I forget now how much weight it was. I think 5 pounds in total. I also went swimming this week as well as biking at the gym. On the bike I've been doing 3o minutes of actual cardio biking and then five or ten minutes with the seat as low as possible, working on my bend. It seems to loosen things up.

That's all the week six knee news for you. Oh, except I've now spent about $500 on knee-surgery related expenses (most physio). I very much look forward to NOT having a $55 a week physio expense. Though happily I've been managing to pay for it out of my normal monthly budget instead of going into savings like I feared I'd have to.

Next week I have my first follow-up appointment with my surgeon!