Sunday, September 6, 2009

Random Knee Thoughts, 8-Month Edition

My kids are back at school, which is nice. I’m a huge fan of routines and schedules. Other than that, not a heckuva lot has changed over the past few weeks. Well, I am coaching my almost 4-year old daughter’s soccer team, the Rainbow Warriors. Within 3 minutes at practice, one of the girls either (a) has to go potty; (b) complains that’s she’s hot/tired; or (c) wants to know when she can play on the nearby playground. Coaching 3- and 4-year old girls is like herding cats. Rewarding, but sometimes it can be a major beating, too. Go Green Death. http://www.patriotledger.com/sports/x575725578/-Green-Death-coach-resigns

Back to my knee. Using the marathon analogy, I guess I’m at the 16-mile mark. I’ve made significant progress, but then I realize, “holy sh*t! I’ve still got 10 more miles to go. Not to mention that a pack of Kenyans just lapped me.” All kidding aside, the knee feels like it’s inching closer to normal. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve stepped up the intensity of my knee exercises. At this point in the rehab, it’s more of the same. Basically, I just increase the number of reps, weight and difficulty. For example, I now do 25 step-ups on a 2-foot high stool with 25 pound weights in each hand, a far cry from doings heel touches on top of a phonebook back when I started my rehab. The gimpy knee remains much weaker than my good one; my quad remains squishy. And pasty. No matter how hard I try to isolate my bad knee, the good knee instinctively compensates. On the step-ups, for instance, the help usually arrives in the form of a small “push” off the floor by the good leg before elevating atop the platform. Luckily, it’s almost impossible to cheat on certain leg exercises, such as the leg press and the nautilus, 1-legged squat machines.

The knee still makes little clicking and crunching noises when I walk. It pretty much has been since the surgery. But it doesn’t bother me. The back of my knee also “pops” frequently, especially whenever I wake up first thing in the morning, or after my leg extends from a hyper-extended position. Again, no pain, but these can’t be good things. The crepitus usually signals overgrowth of the cloned cartilage. While not ruling out overgrowth, my OS noted that the new porcelain sealants usually prevent overgrowth. We’ll see.

The area of my knee that may or may not have a torn meniscus kinda aches, but still hasn’t limited my activities or rehab. I’m hoping MRI, Part 2 will reveal the extent of the damage. In a perfect (surgical) world, my OS could fix the meniscus tear at the same time he removes my screws. I’m not sure whether that’s possible, or even advisable. Or even whether, if the meniscus is torn, that I should wait until Spring 2010 to get it fixed, which is presumably when the screws will be removed.

That’s about it. Pretty boring update, I know. But that’s what you get at 8 months. Meat and potatoes.

2 comments:

Heidi said...

Hey Jim,
I just scheduled the first of my 2 surgeries, and am glad to hear that you are slowly getting better. I'm a little nervous, though, because I'm a paramedic, and was hoping to be back to work (i.e. hauling people up and down stairs) by 6 months. I'm guessing since you are only doing stair-steps with only 25lb weights, this might not be possible. They said that when they go in for the biopsy they might discover that I am not even eligible due to the extensive damage to my knee, (there are 4 surfaces they would have to do this procedure on). But I have been following your advice and strength training as much as my knee allows, as well as working on flexibility. I'm learning to swim, since at this point I can't walk for long distances or (obviously) jog or run. My first surgery is in 2 weeks, and the second surgery will probably be in December, if I am a candidate. I'll keep you posted

Jim said...

Hey Heidi. Wow, 4 lesions. Good luck with the surgery. Who's your surgeon? Let me know how it goes.

I'm not sure I could've carried people up/down stairs before the surgery :-)