Oh, woe is me!

Knee replacement surgery is no joke. It's a major surgery and involves a long, hard road to recovery. Believe me, I know! It's been 3 weeks since surgery and I'm still having a lot of pain. The swelling has gone down some, but increases with long periods of standing or physical therapy. But the thing that bothers me the most if the feeling that my skin is going to split open when I bend my knee past a 100 degree angle. How much is that, you say? Well, when seated, a normal person's knee is bent at between 100 and 110 degrees. When you've had knee replacement surgery, forcing the knee to move past 100 degrees can put a lot of stress on the incision and make it feel like it will burst open. Thankfully, the surgery took a lot of internal stitches and used super glue to hold the skin together, but the feeling of skin stretching past its limit is extremely painful. 

Today was physical therapy day. My therapist, Dr. Makayla, is kind and compassionate, but she knows what has to be done and doesn't let a patient dictate the session. She'll ask me how I'm doing during various exercises and if I say something is causing pain or I feel like I can't do any more, she'll let me rest. I'm glad she's not a slave driver. 

I have to do all sorts of exercises. I spend the first fifteen minutes of therapy on the stepper machine, then I go to seated leg lifts, heel to toe stretches, stepping over hurdles, going up and down steps, and today, I had to do the BlazePod reaction training platform. It's very challenging and reminded me of Twister but with a twist - the circles or pods in this case, light up and light at random times making the person doing therapy pay close attention in order to correctly step on the lighted pod. The timing of the lights increases in frequency the more the session goes on and makes the patient move faster and faster. By the end of my session, I felt like I was in come random online dance game- one my older grandkids might enjoy playing, but I didn't enjoy it. When I was done, I was sore. My therapist knew it and sent me to the icing table for some much needed cooling down. 

All of these exercises are to help loosen up and strengthen my knee while giving me back the mobility I had before surgery. I'm told it will take about 12 weeks before I start to feel better. I hope it's sooner than that. This old lady is struggling.