Therapy

    Tuesday  marked the 4th week since my TKR, and my third week of physical therapy.  Although the woman who motivated me to seriously consider the surgery warned against out-patient physical therapy,saying it was too rigorous,  I have to say I have found it to be interesting, effective, and not brutal as described.  Today the angle of flexion of my right knee was 122 degrees, which the therapist says is the normal range.  But of course the normal flexion at that range would not be painful, as it definitely is at present.  But the pain will lessen as the knee gets used to bending that far. 
   It seems strange to be receiving comments that my progress is extraordinary, and I have to believe it because everyone from the nurses in the hospital to the home health workers, the P.A. and the physical therapists at the Rehab Center remarks on it constantly.  I have never been particularly athletic or overly motivated, so I have to believe the surgery was a kind of fortunate fluke.  The surgeon who operated on me performed 8 ortho-surgeries last Friday, and he has used the newer Signature implant many times before, and evidently without such striking results.  I've watched several different real-time videos of the procedure, including one on a cadaver, and the only observation I made  that could account for my super range of motion is the way the surgeon manipulates the leg after inserting the implant, to be sure the range of motion is good. It looks like the leg is flailed back and forth like a dead fish.
    And there's something I don't understand about anesthesia; supposedly there is a nerve block to prevent pain, and then the administration of the type of sedation that is not general anesthesia, but rather the kind that just makes you forget what  has happened.  I don't buy that; I'm sure I'd have some memory of the sounds of the cutting and the hammering, but above all if I were even minimally awake, I know I would remember somebody putting that white elastic stocking on my other leg.  How could anybody force your leg into a tight tube without your knowledge if you had any consciousness at all.
    But for me the most interesting part of attending physical therapy is a feeling of independent autonomy.  I'm one of the few people I know who has never  been in a gym, not even Curves, which attracted almost every woman I knew a few years ago.  So it's all new to me, and all I have to do is walk into the room, where I know nobody and they don't know me, or anybody who knows me.  It's all a clean slate, and the therapy is all there is.  It is a simple thing; almost Zen-like.   I find it easy to detach myself and just concentrate on the activities.  Possibly that's why I can work through the discomfort and even the pain.  My patient advocate in the hospital said there would be real pain, the woman skipping around the polling place last November was advocating the surgery, but advising me to say no to the on-site therapy, and even my orthopedic surgeon said I would be hating him at my appointment after rehab was completed.  No exaggeration--I hear the words tough, stoic, amazing, remarkable, unparalleled.   I don't have any explanation, but it is gratifying for me to have a straight-line focus where I am able to do something which is known only to me, and of course to you, Oh Blog.