33 Days After ACL Surgery: 2nd day of PT and walking

As Gina said today : "Today is the first day of a long couple of months"...

And I'm glad to get it out of the way. Day by day is my motto and we will see where this takes me in this whole recovery thing. The only bad news of the day is when I asked the following question...

Q: "When will I be able to ride a bicycle outside?"

...and received the following answer...

A: "In about 6 months..."

Do I believe that? No. I will aim to do that much much much sooner...but just goes to show you what the usual protocal is and what she thinks of my leg so far (no muscle).

Follow me after the jump for the good news.

32 Days After ACL Surgery: First day of PT + Workout Plan

You're in for a real treat in this post, mostly if your trying to find a solid workout plan for the early stages of ACL recovery. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was going in for my first PT session yesterday. My physical therapists name is Gina (from here on out I will refer to my physical therapist as "Gina" instead of typing out "physical therapist" every time) and this kind little asian lady will lead me through recovery for the next few weeks. 

Follow me after the jump to hear about my first day at PT and for a whole workout plan that she wrote out for me to follow at home.

30 Days After ACL Surgery: Not following doctors orders, mixed feelings about progress, just keep reading...

my heels against the wall, doing stretches, tan left leg, sick right leg

10 days ago I went to my 2nd doctors visit post surgery and I went in pretty confident knowing that I had been doing what he told me to do (exercises and applying pressure on my leg) and more (about 200-400 reps daily and actually walking without crutches).

By the end of the visit, we were both satisfied with my progress. He told me not to overdo it and to not get too comfortable on my leg (no walking without the brace, still use crutches here and there), but he felt I was ready to begin physical therapy.

10 days later, I have kept the brace on at all times, not used the crutches at all, and the biggest misque...I have not started physical therapy yet (I start tomorrow).

Follow me after the jump for my feelings and reasons for all this.

19 Days After ACL Surgery: 2nd Doctor Visit Coming Up

Its been a few days since my last post, mostly because like I mentioned in that last one, not much has been happening. I have been doing my exercises and stretches as well as walking on it around the house, while also taking breaks on crutches.

The past two weeks I have stuck to my routine workout which mostly consisted of 100-200 leg lifts, 100 quad tighteners, regular knee bending here and there, and straightening my leg as much as possible.

Tomorrow I am going to the doctor for the 2nd time since surgery and the 1st time in 2 weeks....hoping to be cleared for driving and PT. Speaking of driving, I drove the other day. How? Well, I drive a Mazda 3 hatchback and always like sitting far back from the steering wheel. Fortunately, this routine made it easier to adjust sitting all the way back and being comfortable. I stepped into the car with my brace locked and unlocked it once I was ready to go. It was not difficult at all to drive and I had it in cruise control on the highway.

Still, it will be better to hear it from the doc tomorrow that its OK to drive.

Just like last time, I intend on having a set of question ready for him.

Follow me after the jump for my much shorter list of questions.

2 Weeks After ACL Surgery: Sharp knee pains

Because I feel like everyday I am posting almost the same thing, I will probably start keeping these posts shorter.

The last couple of days I have been walking a fair amount and today I tried taking a day off from walking.  I didn't do too well at that because I walked around the house and backyard. By the time I was getting ready for bed, I made sure to crutch to the bathroom and keep weight of the leg.

Follow me after the jump to hear about my situation.

13 Days After ACL Surgery: Sore some more

Maybe 3 hours of sleep was not enough to help me recover from a hard day of exercises. I was sore all day, even after Advil, and tried using crutches as much as possible to keep the weight of my leg. I was not too successful with that.

Even though I was feeling pain all day, I managed to go through with my exercises and managed to bend my knee to about 80 degrees.

Follow me after the jump to find out I am attempting to get rid of the pain and what I plan on doing tomorrow.

12 Days After ACL Surgery: 90 degree flexion?

Walk, stretch, lift...repeat.

Same as every other day. Im getting sick of it and in desperate need to get out of the house. Thats why tomorrow I am going fishing with Tom and Jetter where I hope to bask in the sun and relax with mother nature.

Back to the main point of this blog...my knee. I continued doing todays exercises, banged out a few more reps and sets actually. By a few I mean I did like 200 leg lifts during the day, about 400 quad tighteners, etc. I also continued the "gravity" stretch where I lay against the wall and put my feet up. Today it was a lot easier to bend it to 90 degrees so there is progress.

Actually, it was so much easier that I chose "90 degree flexion" as the title for this post. Yea, its a pretty big deal. But I still can't bend it myself that much. I tried hamstring curls but its difficult. Also, I barely used the crutches today and even stood in the shower (no brace + weight = I hope not a bad idea). Don't worry though, I made sure not to pivot or put much pressure on it...the whole time.

Follow me after the jump to see some new pictures of my knee.

11 Days After ACL Surgery: Standing tall

Overall, up until around 8PM today, my leg situation was pretty dire. I was feeling some pain especially in the morning and I avoided doing too much exercises (barely any). Once I finally took some Advil at 7:30PM, that changed everything.

Follow me after the jump to hear about how I was walking and flexing the knee.

10 Days After ACL Surgery: Walking forward

Ever since I got out of bed this morning, I never looked back. As I was brushing my teeth I noticed that I was standing without any crutches and without any pain. I felt comfortable enough to put all weight on my leg and guess what? Nothing happened...and thats great!

Follow me after the jump to see how much I walked today.

9 Days After ACL Surgery: Less painkillers, more movement

Over the last 2 days have slowly started to see more progress. The following 3 things have been affected:

1) painkillers

2) flexion

3) pressure on leg

Follow after the jump to hear about it.

7 Days After Surgery: I can bend my knee, a little more

One week later..

Haven't slept since around 6AM all day after I woke up with some discomfort in my leg. Took an advil after some breakfast and its held up until about 2PM. Last night I banged out all the exercises and feel a huge difference in my leg today in terms of movement.

I will do the workouts later as well and see how painkillers go.