Post-Op Update #1

It’s been 11 days since I had my surgeries. 12 days of which I’ve been stuck at home, except for day 9, which was the day of my follow-up appointment with my orthopaedic surgeon. The thick bandages which covered my knees came off on day 5, with the incisions then covered up with Tegaderm waterproof bandages.

Things I achieved during this time included:

1. Walking down four flights of stairs to let someone into my building as he’d forgotten his keys to my place, and back up again on day 3
2. Walking around inside my flat without crutches (day 4 while the bandages were on, day 6 after I got used to not having my knees supported by the thick dressing)
3. Doing three of Sun Salutation A on day 7
4. Washing the dishes on day 8
5. Doing five of Sun Salutations A and one of Sun Salutation B on day 11

Not too bad, given that I’ve had the surgery on both knees.
The surgeon seemed pleased with my progress. In fact, he seemed downright surprised by the fact that I was walking pretty decently. Still, because I had the procedure done on both knees, he still doesn’t recommend physiotherapy at this stage (he thinks physiotherapists tend to push their clients too hard at the beginning), and will check up on my in two to three weeks time to see my progress then.

What exactly did I have done to my knees? Well, it turned out that I suffer from patellar maltracking brought on by a muscle imbalance. My outer muscles are stronger than my inner muscles, which caused my knee cap to be pulled of the groove it’s meant to be in, scuffing the bones of the knee. This has been going on for years (since my teens, if memory serves me right), and resulted in scarring and debris floating around inside my knee, increasing the pain.

In order to correct this, my surgeon trimmed my knee cap and fat pad at the top of the knee and removed all the floating bits. He also flushed my knees, which meant that my knees were initially pretty swollen, and made squelching noises whenever I tried to bend them the first few days.

Now, I need physiotherapy in order to correct the imbalance and re-learn how to walk properly so that this doesn’t happen again. There is a surgical procedure which can help if physiotherapy doesn’t work, but, as it’s a more major procedure compared to an arthroscopy, my surgeon would prefer I rehab my knees.

To be honest, so do I. I’ll need to work hard over the next few months, but, right now, I am so thankful that he found something to explain the pain I’d been suffering when he did the arthroscopies. It would have been so much worse if they weren’t able to find anything at all.