First Day of Physical Therapy
Today was the first day of physical therapy. We arrived at the therapist’s office at about 8:00 and filled out all of the insurance paperwork that bogs down our healthcare system. When the therapist called me back, he asked me some questions about my goals for therapy, what types of activities I wanted to get back to, and then went over some questions about the surgery and how I had been feeling.
The next thing he did was change the dressings on my knee. I was so happy to have that done, because, as I mentioned before they had quite a lot of blood on them. He said what was really happening was that when they perform the surgery, they pump your knee full of quite a bit of saline solution so that it is easier to see what they are doing. When they wrap your knee up after the operation, they are expecting it to ooze back out over the next few days, so they put some extra padding and gauze there to absorb it.
From there he measured the range of motion of both of my legs using a goniometer. This was done in two ways. First, he had me stretch out my good leg, and with a cushion under my ankle, try to press my knee flat against the table. He then measured the angle that my upper and lower leg made with the Goniometer. He then had me repeat this with the other leg and said that I was two degrees short of making my leg completely straight.
Next he had me sit up and place my foot on the table and try to pull the heel of my foot as close to me as I could. He would then measure the angle that the two halves of my legs made that way. Again this was repeated with both legs. When doing my bad leg, (I guess I shouldn’t call it “bad”, it is better now than it was), my surgical leg, he told me to keep going until I felt pressure. This pressure, he explained was the fluid still left in my knee being compressed.
Since I was still two degrees short of making my surgical leg completely straight, he told me to stop doing the straight-leg raises and focus on the quad sets. No argument from me there, as the straight leg raises were pretty intense. He said the reason why is that we need to make sure my leg can go completely straight as soon as we can. Otherwise there is a risk that a cyclops lesion could form under my knee, preventing my leg from bending completely. This would then have to be removed by another surgery. Although he did say that it wasn’t common for that to happen. (He had only had one case in the last six years.)
Next we were on to the compression boot. The compression “boot” (also known as an intermittent extremity pump), is a plastic tube that goes over your foot and leg and zips closed. Sort of like a blood pressure cuff for your entire leg. It is connected to a machine that inflates it with air, holds it full for about 30 seconds, and then deflates. It then cycles through this process for about 10 minutes. The purpose is to push some of the fluid out of your leg, thus reducing the swelling. The machine squeezes pretty tight, but the pressure felt comfortable. It worked well, my leg was definitely much less swollen after the treatment.
He then set up appointments with me for three more visits the following week. He also advised me to make sure that I take my pain medication about 30 minutes before coming. (Doesn’t that sound foreboding.)
Filed under: ACL Recovery
[…] important aspect of rehabilitation for an acl injury, is the recovery of your range of motion. On my first visit to physical therapy, I had a range of motion of 2 - 70. This means that my leg was two degrees short of being able to […]