Thursday and Friday

Thursday: unremarkable. Tried to do some exercises, but found my muscles were too fatigued. So I just had a nice, unremarkable day. I am making progress on the quilt I am working on. Finished the edge finishing, which was tricky because of the 8-point star shape. It's a matter of making the fabric fold over the inside angle, and lay flat at the same time. Now I am doing the final step..quilting designs in the areas not already tied. It's looking pretty.

I am sick of leaning on crutches. Makes my hands hurt.

Friday

Physical Therapy in the morning: Getting over the fear of putting full weight on my leg. It feels wonderful to walk without leaning on the crutches, but takes me several passes back and forth in the living room to be brave enough not to. I was able to out full weight on my leg a week ago, but doing so created 3 days of pain, so that's the source of the fear. If I get through tonight without pain, then I will know that the knee is ready.

One of the exercises causes a sharp pain just below the knee on the medial side of the incision. It is leg extension while lying on my back with a pillow to hold the leg at a 45 degree angle. Then a couple other exercises create the same pain. My therapist massages (gently!) the pain away, and since I am seeing my doctor this afternoon, tells me to be sure to ask him about it.

For the rest of the day, I walk with crutches simply for balance...so nice for my hands!

When I see the doctor, stitches come out, X-ray of my knee is taken, when I ask him about the spot that hurt and describe the exercise, he says. "Why do you want to do that? If it hurts, don't do it!" My fitness background screams in my mind: "I have to do that exercise to strengthen my knee!"  As we talk I come to understand that I don't have to do that particular exercise..when my knee is ready, it won't hurt to do it, and then it will be effective.

The other cool thing he explains is that with the medial replacement they have to "disturb" the joint capsule... ie. open it up, then close it... It takes a whole to heal, and that's why I keep getting sudden pain in that spot. Ah-hah! So now I won't worry about it. I won't do exercises that aggravate it. (There is more than one way to work on knee extension!)

And lest I give a wrong impression: after a couple tries my therapist abandoned that particular exercise and gave me leg extensions that did not hurt. So she was already doing what the doctor recommended. He just added the extra bit of info. 

I did not take a walk today, because between physical therapy and getting to the doctor appointment it was enough. It was nice to get out and away from the house for a bit.