Today is the third week anniversary of my new knee. A lot has happened in the last week.
I went to my surgeon for my follow up early this week and he is quite pleased with the progress. Nearly giddy I think :-) He said doing surgery on younger people is a catch 22 -- you hate to do it to someone so young who may need a second one down the road but it was nice to see how fast someone young heals from it. Good news was that at just 2 weeks and a day he gave me the clearance to swim.
At physical therapy I discovered that while I have enough bend to put my operated leg on a higher step, my quad muscle is not strong enough to lift my body up to it. Not even close. That is disappointing so I decided to make that a goal in my homework this week. Since I could get in the pool, I used the buoyancy of the water to help. I started with water walking, making sure to do the heel strike and push off the ball of my foot. Once I had a little whirl pool going, I reversed and went against the flow of the water. Then I held the side of the pool and stepped up. Once I had that down, I did it without holding the side of the pool. I fell a few times but since the water "caught" me it wasn't a bid deal. Then I repeated the series.
This is surprisingly hard. Who would guess that walking up a step would be that fatiguing to a muscle? The good news is that its improved throughout the week. The bad news is that its still hard and its still not very controlled.
I no longer use a cane or crutch, even on uneven ground. I DO walk VERY slowly on uneven ground. I went to the barn a couple of times this week and cleaned some stalls and one of the days took a few pads of hay out to the paddock. Its embarrassing how slow I walk on uneven ground. I still don't feel safe pushing the wheelbarrow across the uneven ground or leading the horses so I am still fairly useless at the barn. Irritating because I want to be helpful and I am relying on my ever generous neighbor friend.
Okay... here is the last tidbit... don't tell anyone but I am driving ... a little. I have driven to the barn twice and feel okay but don't think I'd feel comfortable driving over about 20 miles an hour so I think that is as far as I will go for now. Luckily the barn just down the street from my house and on a back road so I can drive slow.
So that's where I am at week three. Ahead of schedule but still not as quick as I would like.
---
Want to read more about knee replacement? Put "knee replacement" in the search box to pull up all my postings on the subject.