A week ago, I was feeling pretty discouraged about my knee. The swelling was pretty much unchanged, which meant I was still hobbling around to a degree that was noticed by other people. Both of my physical therapy appointments were… well, they were sort of iffy, as the knee didn’t really want to cooperate with doing anything. Both PTs that I saw looked at my knee and inquired as to when I would get in to see the doctor next. One of them even went so far as to mention that, yeah, this was sort of a lot of swelling for as far out of surgery as I was and it was a little… unusual. Great. Exactly what I wanted to hear.
So when I left town for a weekend in Chicago, I thought nothing of the fact that I wouldn’t be anywhere near an exercise bike for several days. When I came home with a cold and decided to sleep instead of going to the gym? I didn’t care. And that was apparently exactly what my knee needed, because it has been worlds better this week than it has since the surgery. I’m back to driving my own car and can even get comfortable sleeping on my stomach. If I think about it, I can even walk just about normally. They’re little things, for sure, but they’re little things that I haven’t been able to do in a month, so it’s pretty exciting.
Even more exciting is that since the knee was behaving, I was able to work it pretty hard in both of my PT appointments this week. No complaints, no angry post-PT swelling or discomfort. Just a much more functional knee than I have seen in quite some time.
Even with this week’s jump forward, I’ve basically let go of any time-based goals related to running, which has let me focus on what I can do now and how to improve that. Even with the improved motion, that leg is still far weaker than the other one. Today, the PT had me do some basic leg raises with a 2-pound ankle weight, and that was depressingly difficult. Clearly there is still some work to be done there. (On the flip side, though, doing those leg raises with a 1-pound ankle weight was almost impossible two weeks ago, but now it’s absolutely no problem. So there’s progress being made.)
Here’s hoping that the upward trend continues.
So happy to hear your knee is cooperating! Even for folks like me that think exercise is the devil’s work, having fully functioning parts makes everything easier. Super speedy recovery!
Thanks for the update – been thinking about you and wondering! Sounds like things are progressing, even if it’s not as quickly as you might hope for. Hang in there