SUCCESS!!

I just got back from the fracture clinic for my 6 week post-op appointment and a follow-up xray, and YAY!!!! Everything is good, my range of motion is good, my xray looked good and I'm officially out of the zimmer splint and I'm allowed to start bearing weight slowly!

As you can see from the image on the right, the healing is coming along very well, and aside from a little scare on the weekend with the main incision, everything is looking great.  The swelling is still there but it goes down a little bit every day.  From my what PT says, it won't fully go down for about a year so I'm not too worried about that.

Sort of a neat thing I learned at the post-op was that I don't actually have regular surgical screws in my knee.  I have 4 flat staples in my tibia, 3 in my femur, and one screw in my femur.  The cool thing - they're absorbable plastic!  That's right; eventually my body will just absorb the material and I won't have anything in there anymore!  I just think that is one of the coolest things ever - how awesome is modern medicine :)

So that's my awesome news for the day - more updates as I begin to bear weight and work toward getting off these crutches!

***UPDATE***

Well I had my very first physio appointment after getting the good news that I am now working toward full ROM and weight-bearing.  I have a couple new stretches to help improve my ROM, which are pretty uncomfortable but I can handle it pretty well without lasting pain afterward which is pretty cool.  I have several new exercises that I have to do including the stationary bike, leg press and calf raises.

The leg press was the easiest since it mostly uses my quads and because I have such strong legs this one didn't give me much trouble.  The calf raises were trickier since you have to straighten your legs to do it and my leg can't quite go straight yet.  I'm unable to do a full rotation on the stationary bike, so for now I'm working the muscle as well as doing some good ROM stretches that will eventually allow me to do full rotations.

I also have to start 'miming' walking on my crutches.  This means that instead of just letting my leg 'dangle', I have to actually extend, press down with my heel, and follow through like I would as if I were walking on it normally.  Because of my inability to completely straighten my leg yet this is still hard to do, so for now I'm just working on the muscle and putting more and more weight on it as I can handle it.

I'm also very happy to report that I've gone from 85° flexion (bending your knee in) on my own to 90°, and from -11° extension (extending your knee out, starting at 90°) to about -30° since last Tuesday.  Essentially this means that the muscles and tendons allowing me to lift my own leg are getting stronger MUCH faster than me or my PT anticipated so I'm hoping that now that I'm weight-bearing, I will also be able to get off the crutches quickly and get back to my life!

Next up - gym membership!!