Week 7: A Large Needle Full Of Hope

I'm feeling like life is dumping on me right now. This process is so excruciatingly slow. Everyday is a fight for movement in my knee and then when I go to bed I just hope that some of it remains the next morning. Overall, I'm still moving in a positive direction. Just very... very... slowly.

I had a follow-up with my surgeon today. He says that he has not seen a knee act quite like mine. He says that I have beautiful stability but less than stellar movement and gait. Granted, I had just spent over an hour to get there so I was a little stiff. My knee only actively went to 90 degrees. Usually, I can get it to about a 100 or a little more. My extension is also lacking again after a long weekend without the extension device. He'd like to see me have full extension and flexion by the time I hit the 2 month mark on November 19.

At my best, my passive flexion has been at 3 and 1/2 inches from my butt (yesterday) and nearly full extension (last Friday). Aaron has been helping me by bending my knee each night. It took us about 25 tries to get it down that far. And that is 3 and 1/2 without screaming. Our best the week before was around 4 and 1/2 inches. I cried so loud that we worried that our neighbors might call the police for a domestic disturbance. It is slowly getting easier my hope is that by next weekend that I'll have that foot down to my butt.

To help with the range of my range, my doctor's suggested steroids. I'm not a big fan of drugs, especially steroids, but with the problems I am having with my motion I decided to take the risk. I opted for the cortisol shot since it seems to have the fewer side effects than a pill. Although long term use of steroids can disrupt and inhibit healing in the joint, risks with just one shot are minimal. It is not a permanent fix in any way. I am just hoping it buys me some time and brings down the swelling long enough for me to get the rest of the range and build up my quads a little more. Once I achieve this, it's unlikely that this swelling will come back. Now I just have to hope that this works: cortisol shots don't have a positive effect on everyone.

Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks to injecting a fluid into the knee joint space is that there is a temporary (hopefully) reduction in range for my already deficient knee. Aaron and I got it only to 8 and 1/2 inches tonight. It's not sore to the touch though and it feels like some of the heat has left the knee. Usually there is a marked difference in temperature between the two with my swollen knee being several degrees warmer. It is supposed to take a couple days for shot to fully take effect so I'll just have to wait and see how it turns out.