It is six weeks today since the surgery and I didn’t make the 120° passive motion but I did improve. Friday I crutched my way over to the MAC (Malcolm Athletic Center) to ride the bike. At therapy this past Thursday I was able to do full rotations on the bike so I figured I’d be able to do it on the bikes there. Well, I was able to raise the seat as high as I wanted but the pedals are longer so I really was not able to do the rotations. Regardless of that I did half moons and continued to try to make a rotation. Before I was done I was able to do a few rotations but I should have apologized to the person on the bike besides me. The first time I made a full rotation a got a shock of pain and made a voluntary yelp that scared the life out of him. It embarrassed the hell out of me but the funny thing (other than the fact that it made him jump) was that he looked over initially but then went right back to biking like nothing happened.

Over the weekend I went to my in-laws to use their bike. I could not even get close to making a full rotation on that. Their bike I think is older than me and the seat is very limited as to how high you can raise it. Needless to say I had it at its highest level. I still used it and made half moons on it, anything to increase my ROM.

Yesterday at therapy I knew that I didn’t have the 120° but I did think the swelling went down a bit. We took a measurement of the ROM and I had increased to 98°. At this session I rode the bike, I went down to a lower level on the seat. When I was done with the bike I had some pain while trying to straiten my leg, first time I have had any real issue with that. My PT seems to think that it is possibly due to the fact that my knee was bent for an extended period of time while on the bike. After the bike I did electrolysis on my knee (not the type that just runs currents through it to reduce swelling but the type that induces the muscle to flex, I love that one) and quad settings. At the end of the session my ROM was 100° and the swelling (although looked like it had gone down a lot) was down from last session by a ¼ of an inch.

I have included a couple pictures of my knees so you can see the amount of swelling. At this point you can start to see my knee cap now but you can see the amount of swelling that is still there compared to my right leg. Something else that is a bit disheartening is the amount of muscle I have lost on the left leg. I have no thigh or calf in the left leg any more; you can really see this if you compare the calf muscles.