I have not updated for awhile now. I tend to forget when I feel like nothing new has happened. But a lot of new things have happened. Lets go back to September. In September I was in my best friends wedding. She bought me and the other bridesmaids tom wedges to wear for the wedding. Unfortunately I was having a very hard time walking in them, and to add to the difficulty the wedding was outside on a farm. I tried very hard but I could not wear them. My legs were so shaky in them. I had just not built up enough muscle to wear these shoes, especially outside on the grass. Luck for me my friend was not a bridezilla and she did not care at all that i could not wear them. Thank goodness!
By the end of September the weather changed fast in Oregon. It went from 90 degrees to cold and rainy, My knees began to KILL me! so much pain and very swollen. I almost had to call into work (If you forgot I work at the hospital, walking around for twelve hours), however I pushed through. I was icing my knee almost every day. And was continuing to use my muscle stimulator along with the icing. I was very discouraged by this set back! I would take one step forward in recovery and three steps back. I met with my physical therapist and she guessed my current problem was due to the fast change in weather. A lot of the people she worked with was complaining about being in pain too. That made a lot of sense to me. I didn't even think about that.
It took awhile, probably close to a month or slightly over, for my knee to get use to it. As frustrating as that has been I can say it is finally doing better. I do not see PT anymore (stopped after sept) and I have given up my muscle stimulator. I used it for about 2.5 months.
The one thing that has really helped me over anything else was stretching. Stretch stretch stretch! I honestly never though about stretching, they didn't "seem" tight. And if it was painful I thought I could fix it with medicine. But my doctor and my PT said stretching will fix almost all that pain. And they were right! Anytime I have pain (I'm suppose to stretch 2 - 3 times a day, but of course I get busy with life and do forget) I just stretch and most if not all pain is gone.
My doctor works for the UofO football team. He said he has football players complain that their knees hurt, even though they have never had a knee injury. He simply tells them to stretch and if they keep up on it they have no more pain. Apparently the tight muscles pull on the knee cap, this does not allow the knee cap to glide smoothly like it should.
I almost can completely kneel on the floor without the pain too. My doctor said that I may never be able to kneel again, but the high sensitivity is slowly going away. May never, but at least I can usually tolerate it.
I think that is all for updates now. Please ask me questions, if you have them. I try very hard to always respond back! Besides not being able to wear heels yet (I still feel like a new born baby giraffe) I am slowly starting to feel like I have normal knees again. Pain here and there, shakiness here and there. But otherwise pretty dang good.
2/2/2015: I recently have taken up yoga. I have never been a yoga girl. I was a sweat it out and go until you drop on the ground kind of workout girl. But yoga has been AMAZING for my knees. As i said previously stretching helps so much! The yoga is amazing for this. ALSO yoga helps me focus on once leg at a time. A lot of times when i work out and become tired my right knee (the stronger of the two since it had the first surgery) takes over. I tried to focus on not letting the right leg take over but ultimately it always would; even if i did not feel like it was.
I started using the stair machine at the gym to help with this. The bike was nice when i first started working out again because I didn't have my body weight on my legs; but again my right knee would take over once the left was too fatigued.
The stair machine was great; but started feeling too easy. However, lunges still hurt so those are out; and every other exercise i could think of usually worked both legs at the same time. Thats when i finally gave in to trying yoga. OH MY GOSH am I sore! Right now Yoga has been my workout of choice. I highly suggest Yoga to help keep up with the stretching and to target the muscles that are still weak from surgery.
