"The Dick Update" - 3 weeks in

Dick, sitting comfortably in a chair for the first time in over three weeks :)

It's been awhile since my last update on Dick's recovery from breaking his patella. Today marks three weeks since his surgery. We just got back from a visit with his doctor. I was going to write a long post detailing his recovery thus far, but I see that he just sent out an email to our families, and I thought it would be easier to just copy and paste from his own words:

Hi, all -
Just wanted to give a quick knee update.

It's been three weeks since my surgery.

I saw the doctor today, and he was pleased with my progress. The redness on the knee is gone, so that's good. It's likely that it was not an infection, but in any case, it's gone.

I can bend my knee to 60 degrees (which was the goal for today). I can do leg lefts with a lot of effort, so I'll continue to do those exercises to improve range of motion and to fight atrophy on my right leg. I am also able to put weight on the leg and walk without crutches (while, of course, wearing the immobilizer).

I am now allowed to remove my immobilizer so long as I'm not putting weight on the leg. This should really help, as now I should be able to sit in a chair and a car a bit easier. I'll continue to wear the brace other times to prevent injury to the knee. The main things I have to worry about are hitting the knee (i.e., in a fall) or bending the knee to far or too fast. So, this is real progress.

I've been working almost full-time this week (from home), and have found that it has really tired me out. So, I'm not really ready to get back to 100% on my work schedule. I will probably work at home for another week or so, and take it from there.

My next appointment is in two weeks, and at that point, the doctor said they would x-ray the knee again at that time to make sure everything looked ok, and then dramatically accelerate the physical therapy. I'm a little intimidated with the PT. I imagine the training scenes from the first Rocky movie. Or possibly a ballet class run by a particularly sadistic instructor.

I asked how long it would take to "recover" and the doctor said, while every case is unique, I should expect that after about 3 months from the date of surgery I should be able to do most things I could do before. Of course, it will take longer than that to really be "normal", but I should at least be functional.

In any case, Trina and I were quite pleased. It's a long, hard road, and I'm pretty tired, but I am making progress, which is good.

Oh, and I can take showers now, which is really, really good. Believe me.

-dick