Week 4

This was a really hard week of physical therapy. I literally spent about 10 hours in PT this week. Maybe more. It was really intense.

I regressed! Although I did all of the exercises to improve my extension and continued to work on my flexion (bending), my extension is worse than last week! NOT GOOD! Like a lot worse. I can't get my knee straight anymore.

My theory on this is that I tried too hard to get things to work and, as a result, I stopped focusing on my VMO and instead worked other stronger muscles to compensate. This resulted in a lot of pain in my shin. And, needless to say, didn't help. You can't force things!!! During my second follow-up appointment with my surgeon, he told me to relax. He said that a lot of resources say that patients need to get to full extension by 3 weeks or 4 weeks at the latest (which is now). But that really I have until 6-7 weeks. He said that I have a lot of tension in my body and that it doesn't help matters. He can tell that I am trying hard (which my PT substitute guy is unaware off) and he reassured me that my muscles will come around. He is nice.

So we added some new and exciting exercises to my current routine:

1. prone hangs with weight for 1 hour each day (ouch!)
2. a hyperextension brace to sleep in
3. electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) - to use electrical impulses to make my VMO contract; reminds of frog sciatic nerve experiments in cell biology lab in college

The amount of pain that I am in increased a bunch this week. I am exhausted and pretty stressed out.