It makes no sense to do a daily journal as most days are exaclty the same. But at lease a periodical one will help me not feel all by myself in this crap. So getting up to speed…
April 1- broken knees in 3 places/ ruptured patella tendons (both). Well F*ck me!
April 2nd surgery and confined to my couch/wheelchair and limited mobility with crutches. Massive Braces locked my legs straight
Mid May- Braces adjusted to allow limited range of motion. exercises consisted of contracting quads and shins while sitting on floor and manually bending leg as I began to work on my range of motion.
June- Braces removed, range of motion steadily improving. Trying to walk again sucks! Pain on top of knees, legs give out if I don’t concentrate on every step. Exercise in Pool.
Mid June- Allowed to do very light leg press and ride the bike in the gym. Legs flacid and weak. Still a lot of pain anytime I have to get up from a seat.
End of June- patella tendons are doing well. Can almost touch my butt in quad stretch.
Added leg extension (just my lower leg as weight) Left leg better than right one. Right leg has some pain at lockout so I usually don’t go to full lockout. Getting easier to walk up stairs-less pain. Patella tracking is better on left than right. Right knee still (grind?) when being bent. It’s not painfull at all so I’ll ask the doc about it this week. I don’t know what to expect with recovery time so I don’t have any real goals yet. Right now I just want to be able to get out of my car and not look like I’m 90 years old.
I was running an obsticle course with some cop buddies of mine at their facility (stupid idea in retrospect considering my sprinting was going very well). Anyway, I was heading towards the six foot barrier and preparing to jump… As I began to break down (picture a wide receiver slowing from acceleration to make a cut), I lost my footing a crashed knees first through the barrier. I didn’t think I was moving that fast but apparently I was. Naturally I tried to get back up but noticed that my legs would not straighten. The odd thing is that there was almost no pain and I wasn’t in shock. I thought maybe I dislocated them since my right cap was positoned near the upper inside calf. My friends helped me back to the ground and my knees slid back into place. “Hmm… shouldn’t I have felt a “pop” … Maybe it is just a dislocation…??” So I asked them to help me up and as I bent my legs again, my knee caps floated back down to my calf again. That was the right knee cap. The left one moved up into my quad. It was obvious then. The barrier is made up of 2 by 4 inch wood.
Monday 8/8/06. Had what will be my final meeting with the doctor who performed my surgery. He says I’m further along in my recovery than he’s ever seen, considering I had bilateral ruptures. I’ve added the Stair Climber to my rehad, performing 5 sets of 100 “walking speed” steps with a minute rest between sets. I’ve also started using the leg extension, 5 sets of 25 reps (15-20 pounds). I do one or the other after my leg presses, which now is done in a kind of 30/30/30 Tri-Set: Both legs, left, then right, decreasing the weight on the single leg presses. I found a leg press where you can adjust the resistance to be greatest at the start, mid point or end of the press. This is cool since me legs are weakest at the mid point. My patella tendons have been flexible enough to perform both leg curls and more importantly, reverse leg presses for about 3 weeks now so that good. Same for stiff leg deads. Another 2 months and I can try jogging. My doctor had me “trot” down the hallway just to see how things looked. He laughed and called me a newborn gazelle but said I was doing great, up to this point. That’s about it. I think I’ll change my avatar to display my beautiful 6 and 8 inch scars. Actually, Doc did a great job with the stitching. They’re very thin.