Back to work

I am very happy to have gotten out of the house!

Wednesday was the first REAL day of rehab. Here's what the session was like:

Started by stretching my hamstring and quad. The quad muscle(the top of your leg above the knee) atrophies very quickly so gettign this back is key. My hamstrings, which are ALWAYS tight are more so since it now has been re-routed through my knee :). Here is an animation of the surgery if you are interested (animation, no blood for the squeamish).
http://www.sportsknee.com/aclhamstring.htm

Next, I go over to a chair device that locks my right leg in and allows me to manually use a device to bend my leg. I do this 9 times to loosen it up and then Mark comes over and measures my 10th attempt to see how much my leg can bend. This morning I got to 97 degrees on my own which is up from 90 degrees on Monday with Mark's help. I was shooting for 100-105 degrees but we will take the progress.

From there it is over to the STATIONARY BIKE. I looked at Mark with a look that said, "Are you high?". I just had surgery 5 days ago and the last time I was in a 'boot' for 6 weeks! He set the bike for 10 minutes and said "I think you will just rock and back and forth on the pedals the whole time but at least you are getting it moving". Ok, that pissed me off and I got around an entire revolution the first try and never looked back. I can't say I was Lance Armstrong but I did pedal out 1.02 miles in the 10 minutes.

From there it was on to wall slides (squats), step ups, leg raises, hip abduction and leg presses.

I was exhausted and enjoyed the 15 minute ice treatment afterwards.

Next week Mark is on vacation and I am hopeful that his replacement is regimented and tough on me.

Week ONE of post surgery is complete! Tomorrow afternoon I see the surgeon so he can smile at his work and his assistant can clean me up and hopefully remove some of the sutures and other things that are holding the knee together :)