Posted on July 30th, 2007 by leefalin
As I mentioned in the last post, there is a tendency to think you can do more than you really can at this point.
Hanging from the eaves of one of our out buildings is a hornet’s nest. Unfortunately this is also the building that we keep our trash cans next to. I was taking out the trash one afternoon when one of the hornets flew way too close to me. Swatting at a hornet only makes him madder, it also makes him send of a special signal that alerts other hornets of danger. Lots of hornets started coming out of the hive, by this time the first hornet had already stung me and I was doing my best to run away. Running at this point is not really possible for me, so it was more of a quick hobble. Fortunately despite my pathetic attempt at fleeing, no other bugs stung me.
The exterminator is coming this week.
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
Posted on July 30th, 2007 by leefalin
Last week I had a followup appointment with the Dr. that performed the surgery and he told me that everything is looking good. He also told me that I could go ahead and stop using the crutch as soon as I felt comfortable.
I used it off and on for the next couple of days and am now crutch free! At first I felt really weird, like my leg was going to collapse at any minute, but gradually my leg felt better and better. Stairs are still a big problem, as is walking down any kind of a slope. Hopefully that will fade as my leg gets stronger.
At physical therapy they’ve had me mostly working on strengthening and balance exercises. My range of motion is fine so thankfully there are no more painful stretches. For strengthening they have me continuing to do the straight leg raises, adductions, and abductions, however now I do them with a 3 pound ankle weight. I’m also doing a variation of the partial squat where you lean against a large exercise ball that is between you and the wall. You then perform the squat as usual. The picture to the left show this (I don’t hold any weights in my hands though).
Also this week I’ve been using the leg press machine to do double leg presses, single leg presses (with less weight), and calf raises.
The hardest strengthening exercises that I’ve been doing is the step up and step down exercises. For these there is a small wooden box placed on the floor in front of me that is about 5 inches high. The goal is to place the foot of your injured leg upon it and then use that leg to step the rest of your body up to the height of the box and step back down. This is really hard to do. What your body wants to do is use the foot of your good leg to sort of launch yourself up to the level of the box so that your injured leg doesn’t have to support as much weight. This is cheating.
For the step down exercises, you start standing with your injured leg on the box, point the heel of your good leg towards the floor, and slowly lower it to the floor. This is really really hard. You can get an idea of what it looks like from this picture only in my version you step down to the side rather than in front.
Overall however I have been feeling great. My leg is pretty stiff in the morning or if I have been sitting in the same position for too long, however the stiffness goes away pretty quickly. I can feel my leg slowly getting stronger, however I have to be careful as there is a tendency to try and do to much. After standing for too long my knee starts to get swollen and so I have to sit down for awhile and ice it for a few minutes.
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
Posted on July 15th, 2007 by leefalin
These week has added a rather unpleasant physical therapy activity. An important aspect of rehabilitation for an acl injury, is the recovery of your range of motion. On my first visit to physical therapy, I had a range of motion of 2 - 70. This means that my leg was two degrees short of being able to be completely straight, and I could bend my knee at about 70 degrees. Normal range of motion for men is about 0 to 140 (although it can range to more extreme values such as -6 to 160), and for women it is -5 to 143. The negative values come from the fact the most people can hyper-extend their knees.
In order to get your range of motion back, it is necessary to stretch your leg. The way they do this is have you lie on your back, then the therapist puts their hands on top of your leg with one hand on each side of the knee, and presses down. Hard. This forces your knee to flex back down. They repeat this a few times, then have you lie on your stomach. This is where the real fun begins. The therapist then takes your leg and bends it towards you, pushing your heal towards your back, and holds it there for several seconds. This really hurts. This is repeated several times.
This painful exercise is necessary however, otherwise you could lose your range of motion and have to have another operation to remove the scar tissue that would eventually form around your knee. After three days of this treatment, my range of motion is now 0 to 128, much better.
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
Posted on July 8th, 2007 by leefalin
This week I made some more progress at physical therapy. We started doing some new exercises:
- Partial Squats: Basically you stand in front of a table (or sturdy chair) with your feet shoulder-width apart, and partially bend both of your knees. Your hands support as much of your weight as needed. The important thing is to go straight down and not bend over.
- Weight Shifts: I have been doing side-to-side weight shifts for a while, however I started doing front to back shifts. For these you put one leg slightly in front of the other, about shoulder width apart, both knees slightly bent. You then just shift your weight from your good leg to the bad leg slowly, as much as feels comfortable. After you finish a set, you switch legs.
- Hip Abductions: For these you just lie on you side and lift your leg up and down slightly, keeping your leg as straight as possible.
- Hip Adduction: For these you place your legs like in this image and lift your leg up and down. These are really hard, probably the hardest of the new set.
- Calf Raises: These are easy at first, but by the end my legs are always shaking. To do them you just stand in front of the table like for the partial squats, and go up on the balls of your feet then come back down. Do this over and over again. It is mainly to work out your calf muscles.
These exercises are much more intense then the earlier set. The other thing that I’ve been working on is walking with just one crutch. The physical therapist suggested that I try doing this at home. It is tiring to do, but it is really nice to have a free hand when you are walking.
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
Posted on July 1st, 2007 by leefalin
So as we near the three week mark, my wife reminded me of the fact that the doctor had suggested that I would probably be walking in 3 - 4 weeks. I’m definitely not walking yet. As I mentioned in the last post, my quadriceps are just now starting to respond, so the sooner I can build up muscle tone in them, the sooner I’ll be back on my feet.
Another important development is that this week (about three days ago), I stopped taking the pain medication. I wonder if there is a connection between that and my quadriceps starting to respond. Originally I was taking 4 - 5 doses a day of vicodin or lortab (I started with vicodin, then after the first week the doctor prescribed lortab.) Both are forms of
hydrocodone combined with about 400 mg of
ibuprofen. Hydrocodone can be highly addictive and can also produce nasty
side effects, so I decided that the sooner that I stopped taking it the better off I would be. The only side effects that I experienced were nausea, dizziness, and constipation, but there was no point in waiting until things got worse.
At first I moved from one dose every 4 hours to one dose every 6. I did this for about two days and then started taking one dose only in the mornings, after breakfast. (Mornings are by far the worst time of day for me.) After two days of this I am now only taking ibuprofen when I have a headache. (Which occurs semi-frequently since I spend most of the day not moving very much).
As with all things on this site its important to know that your experience with pain medication will certainly be different than mine. The people I’ve talked to said that some people are off after a week, while others will keep taking it for a month. It really depends on you and your doctor.
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
Posted on June 29th, 2007 by leefalin
Finally today at physical therapy I was able to do straight-leg raises without any assistance. (Except for the electrical stimulation machine). The therapist also had me start doing partial squats. The partial squats were pretty hard. To do them, you stand in front of the table, and place your hands on the table for balance. Then you place your feet about shoulder-width apart, and keeping your back straight, bend both knees slowly and just a little bit. There wasn’t really any pain, my knee just felt really tight and it was a bit scary to do. Read more…
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
Posted on June 28th, 2007 by leefalin
Yesterday after physical therapy, my wife took the kids to go and visit her mother and sister about an hour away. They planned to stay overnight. This was my idea, I felt like she needed to get out of the house for a change of pace. She was really worried about leaving me alone, but I told her that if she just got me plenty of snacks and some movies from the library (we’re too cheap to get them from the video store). That I’d be fine. Some friends from church were going to bring me dinner so that would be taken care of. What could possibly go wrong?
This morning I thought it would be a nice surprise for my wife if I did all the laundry while she was gone. Besides I thought, I needed to start moving around more to try and kick-start my quads. So I drag the laundry hamper into the laundry room and start a load of whites. No problem.
After some time had passed, I decided it was probably time to put that load into the dryer. Unfortunately when I opened the lid to the washer, it was still filled with water. Dirty, soapy water. After fiddling with the controls for a bit, I checked a couple of sites from google and decided that perhaps the drain hose was clogged. I reach behind the machine and jiggle the hose a little. Big mistake. The hose popped off the bottom of the washing machine, and water proceeded to gush out onto the floor. After a couple of minutes I finally got the hose back on. However, now the floor was covered in water. Walking with crutches is not really hard. Walking with crutches across a floor covered in soapy water is very hard. Somehow I managed to make it unscathed to the bathroom where I retrieved enough towels to dry the floor.
After further diagnosis, it turned out that the pump had gone bad. This was a pretty old washing machine anyways, so tomorrow we’ll stop by Lowe’s after physical therapy and have a new one delivered.
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
Posted on June 25th, 2007 by leefalin
I had my stitches taken out today. The doctor said that the scar is healing up nicely and he advised that I start using Cocoa butter on it to help it heal nicer.
He was a little concerned that my quadriceps hadn’t progressed more. He advised me to keep my knee immobilizer on whenever I’m moving around and not to try walking without the crutches until my quadriceps starts to have more muscle tone.
Later that day I went to physical therapy and maybe it was his comments about my quadriceps, but I was trying really hard to make my leg obey me when we did the
straight-leg raises. But alas it still refuses to follow the simplest commands.
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
Posted on June 21st, 2007 by leefalin
Its been nice being able to spend so much time at home. I get a surprising amount of work done and am still able to stop and read books with the kids or play with them. Having a loose schedule is a big help. A strict schedule doesn’t work as well for us.
We have a general plan that we follow everyday as far as when bedtime is, school time (we homeschool), meal times, etc… Then each morning we sit down together as a family and make a list of what we are going to do. Most of the items don’t have specific times, (we found time restrictions don’t work well for us either). The important thing is that the kids (and the parents) know what to expect.
Tomorrow is physical therapy number 4. I love physical therapy days.
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
Posted on June 20th, 2007 by leefalin
I’m always amazed by how good I feel after physical therapy. Even doing the exercises at home as best I can doesn’t compare. My favorite part is the TENS therapy. My leg feels so good after that.My normal therapist is out of town this week and next so I am being seen by his assistant. It is weird having to explain your case again to a new person. One thing he had me do different this time was sit on a stationary bike and slowly pedal back and forth in a half circle. It felt surprisingly good to do that.
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Filed under: ACL Recovery
As I mentioned in the last post, there is a tendency to think you can do more than you really can at this point.
