Can I change this Blog title?: Discomfort

I imagine 2.5 weeks after surgery is the same for everyone... Not feeling outrageously terrible so we don't take pain meds but feel so uncomfortable that we are unable to sleep, and thus must take pain meds. I'm not sure if my inability to fall asleep at night is due to my discomfort with my knee or my discomfort with my daily activity. I feel as though I have so much energy balled up inside me and can't get rid of it no matter how hard I work the hand bike at the gym, no matter how many situps I do, etc. I think it's only a feeling that running can get rid of. I didn't fall asleep until 4am two nights ago, I was so upset about it!

Yesterday at physical therapy he had me walk backwards on a treadmill to help me naturally straighten out my leg in a walking motion. Everything else was pretty much the same. He didn't measure my flexion angle but it's definitely getting better each visit. (see picture below). Emily, a PT student at VCU, is doing her clinical with my physical therapist and she copied my surgery date down as 7-1-11 when it was really 7-11-11...so my PT, Tony, had thought all along that I was 4 weeks post-op and when he realized I was only 2 weeks he said "man, i thought you were doing good for being 4 weeks post-op!" Needless to say things are progressing very well :)

I asked my physical therapist if I could swim this week once I am able to get my wounds wet and he said no. He also said I can't bike for more than 15 minutes twice a day, and he didn't want me doing things at the gym to make my leg stronger. So this week brought news that was disappointing for me. If you know me you know this is upsetting. Thankfully I've had wonderful friends to hang out with all week and a wonderful boy who sent me flowers to help me cheer up :).

My PT says that my new ACL is at it's strongest right now and at 10-16 weeks post-op I am going to feel my best and want to try new things, but my ACL will be at it's weakest in all of recovery until it revascularizes after 16 weeks. Interesting!

After asking my physical therapist over and over to be able to swim I finally got the okay to do water jogging and kicking lightly on a kick board. So when I went home yesterday I took off my adhesive stitches ready to hop into the pool and unfortunately it took the scabs with it and opened up the wounds again--I put another butterfly adhesive stitch that we had here in the house on it to make sure it closed tightly...so I have to wait even longer to be able to put my leg in a pool for an extended amount of time.