5 Months Post Op

No swelling at 5 months

Pain, Swelling, and Stiffness:  At 5 months I finally have no swelling!   My knee looks like the other one except for the scar.  I still ice after I go to physical therapy but I don't feel the need to ice after I do workouts on my own.  I still have stiffness in the morning when I get out of bed but I don't notice it throughout the day.  As far as pain goes, I still have minor pain in my femoral condyle similar to before I had the surgery.  Over the last month, this pain has come and gone.  I have good weeks where I don't notice it at all and think the surgery worked.  Then the next week I feel it again.  This is the most frustrating part of this surgery.  I'm not sure why the pain comes and goes.  Sometimes I think it's my body reacting to upping my workout routine or trying a new exercise.  Interestingly though, I find that I feel better after I increase the weight or reps of any exercise involving my operated leg as long as I don't overdo it.  So maybe strengthening the muscles helps relieve the pain, I really don't know.  Additionally, I still have slight warmness when I touch my knee. It's not hot, just slightly warmer than the other one.  Everyone I've asked about this says it's ok and normal.  It just means there's still healing going on, which makes sense.

Physical Therapy:  The exercises I'm allowed to do hasn't changed since month 3.  However, I've been increasing the resistance, time, and reps of each exercise.  The exercises I do include:

Stationary bike (up to 45 minutes with varying degrees of resistance)
Elliptical (up to 15 minutes)
Treadmill walking (forwards/backwards for 15 minutes)
Swimming (up to 45 mins freestyle stroke)
Leg Press
Hamstring Curl
SLRs
Heel raises

Here's a short clip of me doing leg press.  I'm still limited to 45 degrees of flexion so it's hard to really  gain much strength doing this.  In this video I'm lifting 35 lbs which is difficult.  Note how skinny my leg is and how hard it is to see much definition as the muscles contract (I call it my baby deer leg).  My surgeon told me at one point I'll probably lose 30-40% muscle strength during the first 2 months of recovery.

Here is another clip of me doing straight leg raises (SLR) working the abductor muscle of the thigh.  I started doing these a week after surgery and I'm still doing them.  This is a good way to work the four major muscles of the thigh:  quads, hamstrings, abductors, and adductors.

A Note on Backwards Walking:  One exercise I recently started is backwards walking on the treadmill.  Backwards walking is good for people recovering from knee surgery because it primarily works the quadriceps and calves unlike normal walking which works the hamstrings and glutes.  Additionally, backwards walking produces less of a sheering force on the knee joint as opposed to forward walking so it is a good exercise to strengthen the muscles without causing too much stress.  So I'll be doing this a lot and trying to increase speed and endurance over time.

Other Thoughts:  Stairs are still difficult, especially going up.  Going down is much easier and I can almost do this normally as long as I'm holding onto the handrail.  I am still very careful not to overdo it with my knee.  I had a giant snow storm this month and was forced to shovel snow to get out of my driveway.  I was very careful to avoid putting too much weight on my operated knee or do much bending with it.  However, the next day I felt more sore than usual and was worried I overdid it.  But I felt ok a few days later.  So what this taught me is that even though I'm feeling a lot better and stronger, I need to not rush the recovery and stick to the exercises I know I can do safely.