I’m a redo so everything is longer. My return to sports is set for 1 year, even though I’m pretty confident I’ll be ready at 6 months. I’d imagine you could go sub-90 degrees at 4-6 months depending on your own readiness.
I’m going to try adding resistance in my squats next week. I’m doing 20 reps on my workout and feeling almost no burn now. The left quad is coming back quick, I went from 5 step-ups to 20, at bodyweight, from Monday to today. Good ole muscle memory.
I’ve lost almost 20lbs now, from 205 to 188 this morning. Its a mix of:
-muscle, I lost an inch of muscle on my leg
-water, I was on creatine before surgery
-fat, metabolism is through the roof
Here’s my measurements, before and after:
Belly - 38.5" → 37"
Hips - 37" → 36.5"
Chest - 41" → 40.5"
Arms - 14.5" (no movement)
Calf - 14.5" (no movement)
Shoulders - 51 → 51.5"
Now that I’m using my knee a fair bit more the pain level has gone up. This is the knee adjusting to weight bearing. I also feel like I tweak my hamstring doing everything, its frustrating. I’m back taking half a percocet with a tylenol at night so I can sleep. The pain was leaving me tossing and turning.
Apparently it will take 6 weeks before my knee feels normal and I don’t have constant pain. The pain is manageable, but it keeps stress levels up and makes me generally tired and not fun, which makes me frustrated.
I’m now clear to swim and bath, the stitches have completely closed up. My pt actually has me massaging the scars to try and work out the fascia damage to ensure longer term leg health, pretty interesting stuff.
Next week I’ve got a 6 hour flight to San Fran so that’ll be a big test for stiffness and pain. I’m going to totally try to beg my way to a first class upgrade (“I just had knee surgery and I can’t afford 1st class myself, but I need the extra leg room… sniff sniff”).
cxrrico7, horrible timing on your part. You’re having surgery after the football season. Surgery is an awesome excuse to lay there on Sunday and watch every game possible.
My first surgery was worse, but it was a patella graft. The patella pain, for me, as bad as the knee repair pain. With an allograft you would have the same level of knee pain, but you won’t have the hamstring issues I have.
Either way you are having two screws put in your leg bones, its going to hurt when you start putting weight on them.
I researched a bit more about allografts and talked to the orthos where I do my therapy. Apparently they radiate the hell out of them to clean off any potential diseases before they put them in. So maybe my doc was giving me a line of bull because he isn’t as comfortable with allografts for some reason???
The orthos were telling me stories about members of the national ski team who blew their ACLs 5-7 times!!! They are basically having their ACLs done once every 2-3 years. Dizamn.
I think I’m ready… I really just can’t wait to get on my to recovery… Just 2 days away now… This is actually my first surgery which is probably a good thing because I’m not quite sure what amount of pain there will be so that leaves me with no fear at all… That will probably change the day after…
I havn’t been home to watch daytime televsion in a very long time… I think I’ll pick up a complete series of something and watch it…
God I was in so much pain last night… Percocet did nothing for me… My knee had the worst throbbing pain… Feeling a little bit better now but I know this has only begun…
Pain is pretty bearable now but for some reason I can’t sleep longer than 20 minutes at a time… I’m staying off the percocet for as long as I can and taking Ibprofen…
Back from my trip to Cali. Wasn’t able to get bumped to 1st class as it was sold out both times. My hammie was a giant knot both times after I got off the plane, but otherwise it was fine.
cxrrico, good to hear you made it through! That first night is terrible eh? You got any movement back in the leg yet, or are you carrying it around with your hands and the other leg?
I stuck to a strick diet of percocet every 4 hours for my first few days, are you finding the ibuprofen strong enough? The doc mentioned I could try it but I wanted to keep the pain down so I could do more with my leg.
Have you tried moving without crutches yet?
The physio therapist cleared me for full weight training now on my legs. Deadlifts, squats, leg press, the works, as long as I’m smart about pushing the weight and range of motion… so on Monday I’m going to start total body workouts again. Thinking about Waterbury high frequency again.
I can hobble around without the crutches a little bit… Doc told me he’s not worried about me messing anything up so I could stand on it as much as I could stand… Laying flat on my back I can’t lift my leg straight up… Laying on my side I can lift my leg up using my hips mostly… I’m just taking ibuprofen and some aspirin now… Pain is pretty tolerable right now… I’ve tried to bend my knee some but, I have very little movement… Doc had me take the ACE bandage off today so I finally got to take a shower…
Still haven’t been able to let a real good one out cuz the percocet has me a little backed up… I’ve been taking fiber pills and even an exlax today… I’m gonna start trying to work it some more to get some more movement… Got any advice? My stitches don’t come out until next Friday so we’ll see how I’m doing by then…
I tore mine in late September 2007.The surgery was in mid-October.I was running with the football in a pickup game and my freind dived for my feet but his shoulder went directly into the inside of my right knee.Without a doubt the surgery is more painful than the actual injury.I felt like shit when I woke up from the surgery.They had me crutch into the bathroom to pee and I ended up throwing up.After two days my mom started cutting the Vicodin in half and only giving me one a day so that I wouldn’t end up getting hooked on them.For some reason my quad muscles didn’t shut down though.Is that unusual?
m50 - Depends on how much quad activation you had. If your quads were fully active than you were a lucky guy! I had some activation, e.g. I could do straight leg raises my first day but I had lots of weird fluid movement so I was often cautious. You back in sports yet? It took me 2 years last time before I could play b-ball without thinking about my knee, and not having any lingering patella pain.
crx - here’s the day 1 - day 5 workout I had from my physio therapist. The other exercise they had me do was literally sit up right and lift my knee to my chest using my hands on my hamstring. I found that one fantastic for range of motion. Day 6 I tried the bike. On day 5 I started my upperbody only workout, and did these exercises at the end of it.
Thx man… I’m gonna try some of those… I actually don’t go to the therapist until my stitches come out which isn’t until Friday… I can’t wait for the swelling to go down… I wish I had that pump you have cuz I have a lot of swelling in my knee all the way down to my ankle… I’m icing it religiously so hopefully it will start going down…
I’m not sure what you mean by quad activation.The day after the injury I could move my leg at the hips using my quads but the knee was too swollen for any knee movements.I haven’t gotten back to sports yet.I started rehab the first week of November so I’m about half way through it.I played a pickup game of one-on-one basketball against my younger brother yesterday but running down the court was tough.My right knee doesn’t push off with the same force yet.I can jog pretty good at this point though.
The swelling has gone down some but, I was in major pain last night trying to sleep… I refused to take percocet so I toughed it out… For some reason it’s not my knee that’s hurting all the time… I have a lot of pain on the top of my foot and there’s a major pain I have on my shin as well… Think that’s prolly from the patella graft but, I don’t know…
dude, I don’t want to get you worried but you might want to phone your doc. I was told to phone my ortho if I had any sharp pain in my lower leg in case it was blood-clotting. Its probably just swelling and something from the patella, but you might want to talk to them.
Man, get it checked as soon as possible, I had that type of pain after a menisectomy and ended up with bloodclots, multiples pulmonary embolism and 6 mounths of coumadin. It might just be surgery related pain (hope it is) but it can be a lot uglier too…Just my two cents.
