Who Knew? Gonna Brag a Bit...

I'm in my 7th week since I realized I had developed a problem that needed attending.  That's 7 weeks of rest, ice, stretching, ultrasound, stimulation, The Stick, pressure on trigger points, lying every day for 20 minutes with my legs tied together below the knees, slowly increasing rpms and time on the stationary bicycle, and so on.  In the past week, the stiffness in my left knee is so incredibly much better.  Over the weekend, I did my yoga routine for the first time in years the way it is supposed to be done.  I had had to adapt it to my needs, so I would do all the positions on the floor before standing up to do the standing ones.  If I were doing the routine in the correct order, I would be up and down off the floor, but that just did not fly with me.  Today, I amazed myself at how quickly I moved around on the floor compared to just a couple of weeks ago.  When I do this position

with my left leg in front, it was comfortable and the legs really looked tight like this.  When I changed legs and put the left leg in the back (like this picture), there was an uncomfortable stretch and my legs were awkwardly loose.  I decided I would show my physical therapist this position today and see if he had any suggestions.


After the physical therapist had done his magic on me today, he had me turn to one side to stretch my leg backwards to stretch the quads.  He was working with my right leg and had temporarily forgotten that I had a replacement in that knee.  He was amazed at how far back he could bend my leg and stated that he had never seen a knee replacement that could bend that much!  I reminded him that my right knee has never been much of a problem.  So then I changed sides, and again he was surprised.  His exact words were, "it's abnormal!"  Keep in mind I was more limber than usual after his treatment, but nonetheless, I was delightfully "abnormal."


Next I showed him my yoga position, and he assured me that it would improve as I continued my stretching.  Then he told me to resume that position and left the room.  He brought back another physical therapist to show her that what I was doing was "abnormal" for knee replacements.  Which leads me to think, are most patients just grateful that the knee pain is gone and they can sleep at night and that's all?  Granted, those are very big gains, but maybe we could all achieve more if we only knew it.  If I don't gain any more ground, I will still be incredibly thankful and glad that I had surgery, but what if I can get back to digging in my yard?


I will have to admit that I have more time to devote to this than most.  One of the great frustrations for me during the last 6 months is that I don't seem to make any progress in my house.  Over the past several years, my house has suffered from benign neglect and consequent clutter.  First it was from pain prior to surgery, then intense pain and rehab, then from my own rehab program.  Recently when I was bemoaning the fact that even though I was so much more active and feeling better, I did not seem to be able to anything more that laundry every week. My husband then suggested that I add up the time I spend every day, including travel time, doing stretches, going to the gym and/or riding my bike, and more recently icing, physical therapy, doctor appointment, and so on.  It turns out that I have a part time job of about 30 hours/week just attending to my rehab!!  And I just thought I was a slouch.

A Bump in the Road (16 months)

Picture from http://www.realbodywork.com/learn/knee/vastlat.htm

Well, I was right.  I have iliotibial (IT) band tendinitis in both legs. (The white band going from the hip to the knee in the picture is the IT band.) We are going to try physical therapy first, and if that alone doesn't work, I'll need some cortisone.  I have been in physical therapy for 8 days, and I can already see significant progress. As sad as I am about this step backwards, I'm pretty sure that I am going to be better off when it is resolved.  The stiffness I have had all along in my left knee is WAY better.  It has improved so much just from using The Stick (see previous post) that I feel encouraged that I may actually return to working in my yard again some day or getting up and down off the floor with future grandkids. 

Leg extension

In discussing this with my doctor, this IT band problem should not be a recurring problem, but one that I will be proactive with with stretching to prevent it from happening.  Looking back on it, because this problem developed so insidiously, it has probably been going on for months and I just thought my healing process was slow.  Guess I'll never know if that's true, but I really do think I will come out better on the other side.  When asking my doctor about the machines I do for strength, he said he didn't think anyone should do the leg extension. So I've scratched it off my list.

I'm back on the stationary bicycle, but building up has been slow.  I rode for 6 minutes the first day, and every minute hurt.  Tried 10 minutes next, and the first 6 minutes hurt.  Slowly built up to 30 minutes and I hurt the rest of the evening, so 30 minutes at one time was too much.  Two sets of 15 minutes was tolerable, and so it goes. I am currently at 25 minutes and the RPMs are steadily increasing to my former ability.  It is frustrating to know how much strength and endurance I am losing, but I am trying to stay positive. It grosses me out to think that by the time I get back on my bike, it will be hot and humid and I will require huge motivation to get going! As I have titled this post, I am optimistic that this is just another bump in the road.