Yes, my knee was not at its best yesterday, so, after a mediocre night's sleep, I woke up determined to do better. Did I accomplish that goal? Well, it wasn't a slam-dunk, but I didn't go backwards and I was incrementally better, so I'm again content with my slow but steady progress.
When I got up this morning, I started off by following a positive routine rather than starting off the day feeling droopy. By 8:30 I had showered/washed my hair, dressed, and done a bit of biking on my pedals. With that industrious beginning to the day, I went downstairs, had breakfast, then settled on the couch with my leg iced and stuck straight up on the big foam wedge, hoping to get my leg into good enough shape to persevere throughout PT at 11:00. I managed to finish a rather silly mystery while sitting there, mainly because Stan had to go to the bank to take care of some business, so I had nothing much else to do.
By the time Stan returned, I had my shoes on, had taken two Percocet (I loathe, absolutely loathe how Percocet makes me feel, but it does help with the efforts of PT), and was ready to go. Stan dropped me off at PT and then went off to the grocery leaving me to face the consequences of having not done a full set of exercises since Saturday morning. I would have felt guilty, but honestly, my leg was hot and somewhat swollen yesterday and I just didn't. So there.
My therapist listened carefully to my recitation of what I'd done (and not done) since seeing her Thursday and accordingly adjusted the routine today. She spent quite a while doing a thorough massage of my quads which may sound nice, but a deep tissue massage is fairly uncomfortable; however, once it's over, it's amazing how much more flexible muscles feel. We did several of the old favorite exercises, went over to the step machine to work on that, then went to the weight press machine for the first time. I pressed 70 pounds today for 30 reps with my legs and it felt surprisingly good. By the time I'd finished everything, my numbers were 0 and 106. Having not exercised over the weekend and having felt so sore and weak yesterday, I was not at all discouraged that I'd increased my ROM (range of motion) only 1 degree. I was just relieved that I hadn't lost some ROM. As for the extension, I have no trouble making the back of my knee touch the table, so with any luck at all, the struggle for extension is more or less over. Now I'll just work on ROM and work I will.
As a side note, my ROM at this point in 2011 with my left knee was 105 and extension was 0, so despite the vast differences in the approaches of my two physical therapists, I'm at almost the exact same point. That's fascinating to me because, until I looked it up just now, I would have sworn I was doing much better with my left knee, but numbers don't lie, so I'm even more content with my progress than I thought I was!
The rest of our day followed a common pattern. After walking upstairs leading with my RIGHT knee (that's big, folks!), I did a bit of reading, resting, puttering around the top floor. Stan went to pick up the granddaughters, brought them home where we enjoyed take-out chicken for dinner. After taking them home, we had a short but pleasant evening. Tomorrow, I will definitely do my exercises!!
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