Recovery from Knee Surgery

[LisRas]

I recently had knee surgery.  I cannot walk more than a 1/4 mile without excruciating pain and a major time loss to elevating my knee with ice.  I need to find a way to stay active without hurting myself and setting my recovery back even further.  My Physical Therapist is cautioning me to be gentle and patient.  My patience has run its course and I am now looking for suggestioons for staying active without pushing too hard.  I have been trying walking a quarter mile and then resting, but the rest is about an hour long.  Does anyone have any suggestions for how to get my exercise in without spending all day working on it?

[Jazzj]

Hi! I do sympathise, it's so hard to be patient when you want to be out and about, but if you push too hard it'll take you longer to recover. When I tore my calf muscle (caught my foot in a rabbit burrow when I was our running), I was advised to run in the pool, using floats, which kept my aerobic ability up, and kept me active without the strain of body weight.

[LisRas]

I will go to the local gym and use the pool.

[Jazzj]

Good luck, and keep in touch to let us know how you get on. 🙂

[GlfWid0]

How is your knee feeling now? I go for a consult for an acl reconstruction next week.

[EveA]

I have hand 10 knee operations on my Right and 1 on my left.  I would agree on the pool. Phyical therapy in the pool works great for the first stages of recovery.  Some Therapist were better than others and had better exercises to offer.  I still do these exercises on my own, having bad knees. I still ice my knees when I have some pain or swelling... that helps a lot for the pain without pills.  I also take the supplement "Wobenzyme" every day.  It is a systemic oral enzyme which reduces inflamation,... so it practically cures the pain instead of masking it.  Luv the stuff.

[GlfWid0]

I am now 7 weeks post op and getting my 10,000 steps a day on average. Feeling tired but mobile 😄

[e_thomas]

Hope you're doing better now. Looks like it's now been a year since your surgery.  Has anyone else recently had knee surgery? I'm 3 1/2 weeks post ACL reconsturction using my hamstring. I didn't wear my Fitbit for the first week or so because I was pretty much completely immoble. I am now walking fine and averaging about 5-6000 steps a day. It's killing me to not be hitting my 10,000 steps, but I I do notice more pain and swelling on the days I do more like 7000 steps. I'd love to have discussions with others in the same boat. I am doing my PT exercises daily and following all the advice from the PT and really trying to take it easy, but it would be great to have some others to talk to through this recovery. I'm a runner and Dr and PT say I won't be running for at least another 2 months which is frustrating. Any tips on how to keep burning calories without going against Drs orders? I asked about swimming and have not been given permission yet. They want the incisions to heal more before getting into a pool. I'm aloud to bike about 15 mins a day at very low resistance. Thanks in advance for all your advice/ideas!