A Burst of Knee Progress

Since my last entry, I’ve made great progress in getting my knee moving again. It’s still a painful process, but that pain interrupts my therapy sessions less and less every day.

One of the items that had caused the most pain was the pair of standing up and sitting down. I can happily report that I’m coming to terms with those problems. Part of the issue was using my walker to stand; I didn’t have complete confidence in it and wound up putting too much weight through my weakened left leg muscles in order to stand. Yesterday, I pushed my walker out of the way and stood without it. *Much* easier. Surprised the hell out of my physical therapist as well. They’ve still got me using it for certain exercises, but it’s more of a choice now than it was.

Another issue I’ve managed to fix is how I was walking. I had been taking baby steps – moving one foot, bringing the other parallel, lather, rinse, repeat. No longer. I’m back to putting one foot in front of the other and walking normally. I can even do it backwards as of today!

I’ve also managed to climb steps with the help of a handrail. Next job there will be to do the exercise with only my walker, since that’s what I’ve got at home.

Occupational therapy is coming along nicely as well. I’m able to dress myself (except for my shoes), brush my teeth & comb my hair at the sink, and almost everything else on their checklist. The only thing I haven’t done is take a shower in a shower stall – I’ve only had bed baths. Once I get that done, I’ll have passed OT’s tests.

I don’t know where I go from here. I thought I’d be going to home health care, but insurance might have a problem with that and decide to put me through more rigorous outpatient PT first. I’m also not sure when I’m going home. My scheduled date is Monday, October 5th, which is dumb – PT takes the weekends off around here. I’m trying to get them to let me go on Friday the 2nd or Saturday the 3rd instead.

That’s as far as I’ve come to date. I’ll check back as more progress warrants it. Thanks for reading!