Wrong Direction

Not doing my home exercises for two weeks finally caught up with me. At physical therapy today it was obvious that I've lost ground in my recovery from ACL reconstruction. Turns out these PTs might know a thing or two afterall! Back to squats, lunges, single-leg squats. And now we're adding some small jumping exercises to retrain my leg and knee to handle running down the stairs.

Holy Disintegrating Allografts, Batman!

I found a fascinating posting today on some site called Big Bob's Knee Blog* or something like that. It's about ACL allografts (i.e. tissue from a cadaver) failing because the tissue disintegrates!

Aaaaaaaaiieeeeeeeee! Something new to worry about.

This discovery led to me searching on "disintegrate allograft ACL". I'm happy to report I haven't found much (yet). But I did learn that a GoreTex synthetic ACL option exists. http://bioweb.usc.edu/courses/2003-spring/documents/bisc406-a.broosan.pdf

It has a high failure rate, so even if I had known about it before my surgery I wouldn't have wanted it. But it is cool to think that some day you could replace an ACL with man-made material.

One of the links to the right covers work early physicians did trying to find a suitable ACL substitute, such as using braided silk thread. Which reminds me that there's a book out there about the evolution of successful blood transfusion. You wouldn't believe what some poor woulded souls had to suffer coursing through their veins all in the name of science -- pig's blood, coconut milk. I heard the author on NPR a long time ago but have never followed up to read the book. The horror of what happens when your body rejects pig's blood has never left me.

Merde! What a morbid post!

*The actual site www.factotem.org/cgi-bin/kneebbs.pl/read/294003

Yoga with Witold

Today I took a private yoga session with Witold at Yogasana.
http://yogasanacenter.com/index.html

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I can resume yoga classes. I'll go back to Level I. About a year ago I was poised to progress to their Level II classes. So it goes.

Witold gave me a routine to do at home that should help to strengthen both of my legs evenly. He said I should do it every day. It entails a sequence of triangle pose, warrior, and a modified pose that I forget the name of (it's sort of a combination of triangle and warrior). He also showed me how I can modify child's pose -- one of the last areas of flexibility I need to recover is stretching my quads when they're weight bearing and this pose is it.

I'm really happy to be back in yoga! I especially like the notion of working both sides of my body evenly. My hope is that it will help to restore the parity of the size of my thighs ; )

Eight Weeks

I had a big big weekend in Boston. I went to see the Cyndi Lauper et. al True Colors concert with my friend Stanley. It was reasonably good if a little long. Cyndi was the star. Debra Harry was a nightmare. Erasure rocked and the weather was beautiful. (The venue was held in a big tent.)

I wore a dress that I never get to wear. The tshirt concessionaire was selling "true color" tiaras for just $5 so I had to buy one. It went with the dress. It was fun to wear because I got a lot of attention. I think maybe people thought I was a man in drag -- or maybe a woman playing a man in drag. Either way, people thought it was a gas.

My friend Stanley has an old photo of me "dressed in drag." He said he uses the photo as a trick question: "Is this a picture of a man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a woman?" Scary! I thought I was just dressed in a flapper costume with a blonde wig.

The latest on my knee is that I can flex it to 133 degrees. It's practically back to normal in terms of straightening and bending. Now I just need to rebuild my quads and work on some lateral stuff. I still can't run for another 8 weeks but I should be skiing on opening day this winter.

Six Weeks

It's been six weeks since my ACL surgery. Overall, I think I'm doing well with recovery. The physical therapist is happy with how straight my leg is when I extend it. It looks almost normal, he says. I have about 15 to 20 degrees left to gain in flexing my knee. The last time they measured it was at 125 degrees after a little warm up.

Today I had ultrasound treatment for the tendonitis. The physical therapist seemed skeptical about the doctor's explanation for the tendonitis. He said that they usually only see that injury in basketball players. He seemed to think that my tendon is more likely irritated by the incision scar tissue that formed. Whatever. The end result is tendonitis and I'm supposed to take it easy and lay off the lunges and step-ups. No big loss in the short run. In the long run, tendonitis is something that is easy to trigger once you've had it once. Kind of a bummer.

Yesterday the surgeon said I will be doing physical therapy twice a week for at least another month. Or did he say two months? One extra benefit to doing this physical therapy is that I should be in good shape for rollerblading pretty soon. Something I've been meaning to do for the last two summers.

Which reminds me. Several people have commented about how athletic or active I am. My friend who writes quarkscrew.org said this to me most recently. It's weird because I really don't feel like an active person. In fact, I feel pretty slothful. Left to my own devices, the most active thing I would do is brush my teeth with a manual toothbrush. Luckily for me I have an active husband who likes to ski. Wait -- that didn't work out for me so well this winter...

Tendonitis

I saw the surgeon today. I've got tendonitis in my patellar tendon. The doc prescribed an anti-inflamatory I've never heard of (meloxicam). And he suggested I wear one of those neoprene sleeves to give my knee a little support. He said this is a common occurrence for ACL surgery patients. During the recovery when the muscles in your upper leg are weak (flacid, ugh) the tendon gets over-used and irritated. Luckily I am past the bone pain from my femur.

The doctor is pleased with my range of motion, strength in my leg, as well as how straight I can extend my leg. He gave me a prescription to give to the physical therapist to address the tendonitis specifically.

My next check-in is the first week of July.