The knee appears to be working out quite nicely. I can now walk without any assistive devices such as a cane, and my gait, or the way I balance when I walk, is normalizing.
I can straighten my leg to 3 degrees shy of perfectly straight, which is great considering that I wasn't able to do that before surgery. I was walking before surgery with that leg slightly bent because of the pain. This had been going on for more than a year, so the tendons had become a tad short. Post-surgical physical therapy has helped me lengthen those tendons, but there is still a little more work we need to do before the leg will fully and normally straighten.
I can also bend this new knee to 105 degrees, which is great for somebody who has only had this new knee for 8 weeks. The goal is to bend it 130 degrees.
In two days it will be 9 weeks. Wow, it seems like it hasn't been that long when you say '9 weeks', but experientially it seems like it has been months since surgery. The saying, "How time flies when you're having fun." implies that it doesn't when you aren't, and that has been true for me.
There have been minor set backs.
At three weeks and three days there was one incident. It was 7-ish in the evening and I was trying to put on a pair of shoes. We needed to go to the store for some groceries. I needed to twist my foot to get it into the shoe. This new knee didn't take kindly to the twisting motions that I needed to ask of it yet, so I always went slow. I set my foot into the shoe on the floor and gently began to twist it into the shoe, but just then Henry, the dog, brushed up against me and made me lose balance just a tad so that the twisting motion occurred a little faster, and I heard a ripping, tearing noise with accompanying severe pain in the outside of the knee. I hollered and gyrated for a few minutes. The severe pain lasted for about 20 minutes, slowly decreasing, and the whole time I was thinking, "I've ripped something, or maybe broken something! What am I going to do!"
Vincent didn't even have a learner's permit yet, and I sure couldn't drive with this much pain, so I had no transportation. My only option was to call for an ambulance, which took me to my second emergency room experience since surgery.
They examined me, took x-rays, and conferred with my surgeon. It was decided that I hadn't broken anything but something could have ripped, so it was back to the walker. "Stay off the leg for a few days, and see the doctor as soon as possible." I had an appointment for a one month check up with my surgeon, Dr. Cornelius, on Jan. 5, so I decided to just take it easy until then. I called and cancelled two physical therapy appointments and settled down to take it easy and wait.
After conferring with the good doctor it was decided that all I had done was tear loose some scar tissue. This was actually a good thing and would speed my mobility. The knee should heal better from now on.
