Recovery from ACL Surgery
ACL Recovery: Day 2 and 3
Tuesday and Wednesday, June 9th and 10th, 2008
I am using my CPM machine and have increased it to 40° flexion on day 2 and 50° flexion on day 3. I was to instructed to start at 30° and increase it 10° each day until I reached 90° . I’m supposed to be at 90 degrees in one week.
Still pretty much in a haze from the pain medication. The pain meds make me dizzy if I get up for more than 5 or 10 minutes, so I’m not up a lot but I can put some weight on my leg with the aid of crutches.
By the end of day 3, I am able to put most of my weight on my leg but I’m still using the crutches.
ACL Recovery: Day 4 and 5
Thursday and Friday, June 11th and 12th, 2008
I have reduced the amount of percocet that I am taking and am not dizzy any more. I ditched the crutches today and am able to hobble around with just the knee brace on, locked at 0 degrees (straight leg) of course. Each day I take a walk down to the end of the block and back. It is nice to be out of bed, moving again, and getting some fresh air.
ACL Recovery: Day 6
Saturday, June 13th, 2008
I am right on track with my flexion. I have the CPM device set at 90° and am able to confortably do it although it gets pretty tight between the 85° and 90° mark. Still doing my set of four excerises they gave me and icing every couple hours and after excercise.
With the help of the excercises, my extension is doing well too. I can straighten my leg fully without any pain, but having your leg locked at 0° all night long get very uncomfortable. I am awake every couple hours, putting my leg in the CPM machine and icing just to have a change of position.
ACL Recovery: Day 10
Wednesday June 18th, 2008
This is my first check in with the doctor since the surgery. He showed me the pictures from my surgery again and explained them in more detail, since I was pretty out of it on the day of surgery.
The nurse took the stiches out and unwrapped the ace bandage from my knee. I was supposed to leave the ace bandage on until this appointment, but with the knee bending caused by the CPM machine it got pretty beat up and I had to rewrap it a couple different times.
He had me take the knee brace off on the exam table and he had me bend my knee over the edge of the table so that he could meausure my flexion. I was only at 75°, even though the CPM machine was puttting me at 90°. Disappointing, but not a huge deal. There was still a lot of swelling and bruising, though less brusing that I thought there would be. Most of the bruising was on the back of my knee and some on the inner side of my knee. Most of the swelling showed on the front of my knee, though he said that the swelling was mostly inside of my knee and what I see on the front is the swelling that the inner part of my knee couldn’t contain.
I left there with a prescripton for physical therapy, where they are suppose to work on my range of motion (ROM. He also offered to write a prescripion for a different kind of pain pills, but I turned him down. I am just using Aleve now to control pain and things seem to be fine with that.
After the appointment, I immediately went and scheduled myself for physical therapy twice per week and a place down the street from my house. They were able to get me in for my initial visit that Saturday. I turned in my CPM machine and ice machine and left there very happy because he had unlocked my knee brace from the o° position and now could bend my knee on my own again. I still have to wear the brace a couple more weeks though.
ACL Recovery: Day 13
Saturday June 21st, 2008
My initial visit with the physical therapist. She measured my flexion at 110 degrees. I had made quite a bit of progress in the past couple days thanks to my heal slides and other excercises that I was doing as often as I could. I had stopped icing though and I shouldn’t have. A word of advice: Keep icing! My extension, which I had really focused on was at 0°, which was really good and apparently, very important.
She gave me more excercises to do until I meet with her next week.
