- Joined
- Jun 6, 2005
- Messages
- 15,710
- Reaction score
- 1,647
- Points
- 699
- Resorts Owned
-
Grandview At Las Vegas
[triennial - points]
Dead Center.
Not only that, I now believe the current knee problem may be related to some of the extreme stretching I got during physical therapy following hip replacement.
I took a weekend off from physical therapy in March to go to a fancypants car show in Florida -- walked all around at the Ritz-Carlton & the Golf Course Of Amelia Island with hardly any trouble. Came back home & resumed physical therapy. During a couple of sessions, the therapist positioned me face down on a padded table, placed a rolled towel just above my right knee, & started a series of major serious right leg stretches. I felt those for sure -- not pain exactly, just teetering on the edge of discomfort but only during the actual stretch, with no leftover sensations when the stretching manipulations were finished.
I know it sounds stupid not to be able to tell where the stiffness & soreness were centered, hip or knee. But that's how it was. When physical therapy sessions were complete & I was dismissed by both the therapist & the orthopedic surgeon, I mistook the residual minor stiffness & soreness as being in my new hip. They weren't. They were in my old knee, which had been pretty much OK until the hip physical therapy. (Plus, back in December when my worn-out hip was hurting bigtime, the pain extended well down my leg to the vicinity of my knee, a phenomenon the doctor called distributed pain. Who knew?)
I am not laying blame for any of this on the physical therapy. More likely is that my old knee had some damage from old-age wear & tear anyway that might well have sent me back to the doctor before long. All the extreme stretching did was call attention to the problem sooner instead of later.
Physical therapy as it was administered to me, BTW, consisted mostly of various self-powered exercises under the direction & supervision of the physical therapists. Typically, they'd warm me up with 10 minutes on a treadmill or stationary bike, then have me do stair-step exercises (up, down, left, right, side, front, etc.), then attach stretchy things to my ankles (1 at a time) & have me do leg extensions forward, backward, right, & left, with both legs. With a stretch loop attached to both ankles, they had me walk sideways across the floor several times. Stuff like that. Much of it was similar to the physical therapy exercises they had me do after left knee replacement in 2010. Except for the stretching part, I think I could do my own physical therapy if I had to, the exercise part anyway, at home at over at the gym.
I got right knee MRI done yesterday -- last patient of the day at the MRI facility over near Tysons Corner VA. They handed me the disk to turn over to the doctor at my follow-up appointment Tuesday morning. Maybe the detailed MRI images will show the doctor something he can fix without signing me up for another TKR. I hope so.
Smack in the middle.
Not only that, I now believe the current knee problem may be related to some of the extreme stretching I got during physical therapy following hip replacement.
I took a weekend off from physical therapy in March to go to a fancypants car show in Florida -- walked all around at the Ritz-Carlton & the Golf Course Of Amelia Island with hardly any trouble. Came back home & resumed physical therapy. During a couple of sessions, the therapist positioned me face down on a padded table, placed a rolled towel just above my right knee, & started a series of major serious right leg stretches. I felt those for sure -- not pain exactly, just teetering on the edge of discomfort but only during the actual stretch, with no leftover sensations when the stretching manipulations were finished.
I know it sounds stupid not to be able to tell where the stiffness & soreness were centered, hip or knee. But that's how it was. When physical therapy sessions were complete & I was dismissed by both the therapist & the orthopedic surgeon, I mistook the residual minor stiffness & soreness as being in my new hip. They weren't. They were in my old knee, which had been pretty much OK until the hip physical therapy. (Plus, back in December when my worn-out hip was hurting bigtime, the pain extended well down my leg to the vicinity of my knee, a phenomenon the doctor called distributed pain. Who knew?)
I am not laying blame for any of this on the physical therapy. More likely is that my old knee had some damage from old-age wear & tear anyway that might well have sent me back to the doctor before long. All the extreme stretching did was call attention to the problem sooner instead of later.
Physical therapy as it was administered to me, BTW, consisted mostly of various self-powered exercises under the direction & supervision of the physical therapists. Typically, they'd warm me up with 10 minutes on a treadmill or stationary bike, then have me do stair-step exercises (up, down, left, right, side, front, etc.), then attach stretchy things to my ankles (1 at a time) & have me do leg extensions forward, backward, right, & left, with both legs. With a stretch loop attached to both ankles, they had me walk sideways across the floor several times. Stuff like that. Much of it was similar to the physical therapy exercises they had me do after left knee replacement in 2010. Except for the stretching part, I think I could do my own physical therapy if I had to, the exercise part anyway, at home at over at the gym.
I got right knee MRI done yesterday -- last patient of the day at the MRI facility over near Tysons Corner VA. They handed me the disk to turn over to the doctor at my follow-up appointment Tuesday morning. Maybe the detailed MRI images will show the doctor something he can fix without signing me up for another TKR. I hope so.
-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.
