Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Readers might remember that I had knee surgery back in March; Dr said to get out and walk and everything would be fine. Well, I did get out and walked, and continue to walk, everywhere. Most days I log at least 3 miles, through the pain I have faithfully walked. But last week I finally said that I had had enough. It has been 3 months and I felt that by now the swelling and pain should have been gone or at least less. No, it has been getting worst.

So I went in to my regular Dr. He wasn’t pleased that the surgeon hadn’t sent me to PT and he said that my right quad was quite a bit weaker than my left quad. Today I went in for my PT evaluation.

My legs were put through a range of motion evaluation (where he moved my relaxed legs) — right and left were similar. Then he used a little hand held gauge to measure kilos of force I could push against.

Sure enough my right quad pushed 11kilos, while the left pushed 22 — he told me that the 50% difference is significant and the goal is to get it to within 90%. I was sure they were pushing the same too.
My right hamstring pushed at 60% (don’t remember the numbers now)
My right hamstring/butt muscle (OK, he used the correct term but that’s where he pointed to) was at 65%

My right knee is ‘very tight with little movement’ All the tightness of the knee and the weaker muscles, which by the way, will NOT be strengthened by walking, are the reasons it is painful to go up or down steps, or bend over, or squat, or move around….

He showed me a couple exercises (more leg lifts and heel slides against a wall) to do and then he hooked me up to an electrical stimulation of my right quad. Imagine your leg being filled with pins and needles. Whew, what a sensation, and I hope that it really works. Then when I got used to the sensation he cranked it up a bit and we watched my quad contract. Interesting. I’m supposed to go 3x a week which will make for a very boring ‘What I did over my summer vacation’ story.