Monday, April 16, 2018

Mitch And His Bad Luck With That Truck! PCL Question - please help


Hi, my name is Mitch and I had PCL Reconstruction 8 days ago and  unable to move my leg at all.   I am looking for information to help me understand my doctors line of thinking. 

Is this normal? My surgeon told me he wants me in a locked brace and to just lay low,  no weight or bending for 6 weeks... I feel like he’s not telling me something. My surgery lasted 6 hours and my leg was numb for 5 days.. it’s so hard to find anybody who has gone through this surgery so all I have is myself and my research.   To me it seems  like something has gone wrong..

Mitch's Story

Last July I fell off the back of a truck. I knew the moment my knee hit the ground something major had happened.. Unfortunately before my MRI date came up,  the knee started feeling better so I told myself it’s healing, it can’t be major.   Couple months later the pain started to show up more and more so I finally did the MRI.  The MRI showed a full rupture but no other knee damage.. surgeon said if it wasn’t for all the scar tissue I could have tried a non surgical  route. From what I was told, my surgeon was trained in Germany from the inventor of the Ossur Rebound PCL Brace. Anyways, here is my embarrassing story of how I got hurt and why it took to long to fix lol.
 

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Here we are at day 42

I've been assigned physical therapy for one month to help me with my gate and straightening.
The bending is worked on daily as well.  Yesterday the doctor  pushed me to 125!

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Day 36

I'm finally able to use coconut oil on my knee and as you can see, the swelling is down just a little bit.
It's still very painful and my at home rehabbing is hard.  Push, Push, Push to gain one or two degrees at a time.  I'm still working on straightening my leg as well. I don't remember the PCL surgery being this difficult as far as gains but I had someone else actually pushing me.

Saturday, March 10, 2018

24 Days Post Op

Not much change in the size of my knee.  It's constantly stiff and the bends are difficult.
In just four days I need to be at 110 degrees.  I think I'm close.  Everyone knows how bad it hurts to force it to bend.  No different with a knee replacement.
For the most part I am using a walker.  I've found after pushing down on my knee to straighten it, my knee wants to buckle afterwards when I'm walking.  I can't risk that so the walker is always used.
If anyone has any tips on straightening I sure would like to hear them.  Mine isn't bad although it does take 3 rounds of pushing down to get it to about 2 degrees.  They say the straightening comes later and the bending is more important now.  I don't see any reason not to focus on both early on.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Getting up to speed. 2 Week Post Op and Scar

The first 3 days in the hospital I was really  drugged up.  Getting home and working on rehab has been different.  I had a team before and now it's Me pushing Me.

At my first post op appt. I was 5 degrees short of goal which was 90.  Next goal is 115 degrees in two weeks.  I  push myself so hard, I end up in tears on the final exercise/bend of 15 reps.  I can do this!


Day 15 First Thing In The Morning



Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Well, Here I Am Again.

Hi Readers!  Skinnygurl here.
On Valentines Day I had a complete knee replacement done on my left knee.  The pcl knee (right) is next and we'll talk about that later.
I'm home now and at day 14 doing rehab on my own.  My doctor appointment showed me at almost a 90 degree bend which is slightly under what the goal was.
I have another two weeks to get to 115 and be rechecked.  Then of course another goal 135? and another recheck.
The story is back in 1977 I had a bad horse accident and tore my ACL.  I was told I would be needing a knee replacement in about 40 years (it's almost exact) which of course I scoffed at.  Well, here I am!