17 days post-op

Well here I am, 17 days after surgery and things are looking pretty good.  Tuesday was my first physiotherapy appointment with actual muscle strengthening exercises and some serious stretching (interpret that as gross gross gross).

Today will be my second appointment and I'm hoping tomorrow I don't hurt as much as I did yesterday.

Thankfully, at my last appointment I found out that in the 6 days between my assessment appointment and my first real physio appointment I doubled my flexibility from about a 35 degree range of motion to a little over 70 degrees.  Unfortunately though not all the news was good news; as a result of the swelling in my knee that remains, my quad is almost completely unusable.  It's a weird feeling trying as hard as you can to flex a muscle that simply does not work right now.

The swelling does go down further every day though, so I'm hoping that I remain on track and by the time I get to my 6 week post-op appointment with the surgeon I'll be cleared to bear weight on my leg again.  Here's how far it has come already (see left).  As you can tell, the bruising is almost completely gone, the incisions are healing very nicely, the swelling in my calf, ankle and foot have reduced considerably (a little still remains though).  There is still quite a bit of swelling around my knee, and the physiotherapist says that swelling won't completely disappear for about a year post-op.

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with how things are coming along, and I'm definitely looking forward to getting back to work on Monday.  I just hope I get used to the stairs and my bad shoulder cooperates eventually so it's not so tiring lol...

Speaking of which... I should really get someone to record just how I'm maneuvering up the three flights of stairs... to a soundtrack like Eye of the Tiger or something (hahaha).  It'd probably make for some pretty entertaining post-op YouTube content :)

Thanks for staying tuned... I'll update later today or tomorrow once I see how today's appointment goes.