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Wed, 05 March 2003
Today I had another physical therapy session. Carmen took me there because Kiron was in Toronto on business (thanks Carmen). Today's objective: 90°. And yes I achieved it (hooray). First Jodi had me warm up on the bike. This meant trying to bend my knee as much as possible, even trying to do a full circle. She said that I'll be able to turn backwards first before I'm able to turn forwards. Apparently its easier. I was about to do 90° on the bike, but she wanted an official measurement, and that involved being on the bench.
So I laid on my side on the bench, and she applied pressure to my leg to "close the gap". It was fairly painful, but she said I was able to bend to 90° three times. Carmen said she could hear me groaning and "yeowing" from the waiting room.
The NMES device to get my quadriceps working
 | Next Jodi worked on the quad muscules. On my good leg, when I'm lying on my back, I can push down on my knee and the muscles above the knee will flex. However, the muscles above my bad knee are all mushy still. So, she attached an NMES device to me (Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation) to get the muscles going again.
It was quite an interesting experience with that thing attached. It was like a tingly feeling. She started me at 40 milliamps (it goes up to 100) and later uped the current to 50 mA. Each "shot" lasted for 15 seconds and there was a 15 second pause between each. I did that for 5 minutes. Each time, I was supposed to push down on my knee to help it along.
After that, I did more exercises: standing on my toes, mini squats (like I'm about to sit down on a chair), stepping up forwards and sideways, ½ stepping down, catching a ball while balancing on one foot, leg raises while lying on my back. Then she massaged my calf muscle plus the area to the left of where the doctor went in to get the piece of hamstring (which is quite bruised still), then ice for 6 minutes. The session lasted for about 90 minutes all up.
Next time: 95°
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