May 2003

Sat, 31 May 2003

Final physio therapy session

Well, its been a while since the last update. Its now over 3 months since the operation (which was February 20). 100 days to be precise. I've now had my last physio session. Jodi did one last measurement and I managed 157°. At that angle, my heel is only about 5 cm away from my backside. So I don't quite have the same movement of my good knee (which can go to 0 cm), but its about how good I was just before the operation.

In the last few sessions, we've being doing strength exercises to really build up the muscles in my legs. I've been doing 10 minutes on the bike (a programmable bike which me doing an strength session where the tension on the wheels gets harder and harder). I did these up and down the hallway twice each time.

• lunges (big steps down the hallway, with the knee of theback leg almost touching the floor)
• skipping (with the knee bending and going as high as possible)
• sideways stepping (without crossing legs, in a sort of scissor action)
• sideways stepping crossing legs both to the front and to the back

We also measured how far I could jump from a standing start (1) with both legs (2) with my good leg (3) with my bad leg. When on one leg, you had to land on that leg too. With both legs I could jump 81" (2.05 m) and with one leg I was managing 45" or something like that. The good news is that the good leg and the bad leg were about the same.

The hair on my leg has pretty much grown back to match the other one now. And the scars are progressing - still there but not sore to rub. Its still numb to the right of the big scar, but I don't think as bad as it originally was.

A side note: I mentioned to Jodi a month ago how I volunteer backstage at Raleigh Little Theatre. She was very interested in finding out more about it and to help out on shows, so I brought in printouts from http://rltvolunteers.org. And now she's worked sound for The Secret Garden and has help with the Casino Night we had this month. Its great that she likes it there.

So there you have it. I'm going to start biking now and maybe play a little golf too (Jodi said to take it easy - no squash or racquet ball just yet). I imagine it will take another 6 months for it to completely recover. Jodi says I should get a new sports brace to wear, and she gave me a photocopy of their catalog with the ones I need. I'm meeting with the doctor in August and he may prescribe a better one (I recall him mentioning that too when I met with him last a month ago).