Normal and Meat

Bike Time: 45 minutes 

Distance: 8.03 miles

I wish my knee could just be a normal knee. I wish I could wake up in the morning and not have to think about it, wonder if it is going to bend properly when I walk, or if I will have to make a huge effort to get it to behave. My plum is still there, unpredictably slowing the bending of my knee. Sometimes I think of it as a sponge filled with pudding--when I bend it, the pudding seeps out. Or maybe it is like a glob of wet toilet paper that needs to get mushed up before it can move through the pipe. Maybe it is like a lump of clay--the clay get through the knee and eventually bend, but the clay slows the process down.

My physical therapist last week seemed slightly concerned that my knee was still stiff. Today, he was more concerned. He looked at my knee and held is while I bent it back and forth. He could see and feel my plum as my knee bent.

"Hmmm," he said. This is not a good noise from a medical person.

"Is this normal?" I asked.

"Well, it isn't consistent for someone who can bike 45 minutes at a stretch," Evan said. "If you can bike for forty-five minutes, you should have no problem with your range of motion in other areas."

I know from past experience that no one ever wants to be an interesting patient. "This is keeping you form making forward progress. You can't start jumping and doing there stuff until this range of motion issue gets resolved." I had noticed that no new exercises had been added to my PT routine for a few weeks. I suppose this is why.

Jason, one of the other members of my PT team, came over to look at my knee again. Evan had iced my leg and wanted to show Jason what was going on.

"My leg feels like a piece of meat that just got out of the freezer," I said.

"Technically, your leg is a piece of meat," Jason said. Touche. (I thought it was funny.) They discussed my scar tissue and swelling causing me a problem.

All in all, I fell like I am getting better, but it is hard to see evidence that I am plateauing. I hope this hiccup doesn't become a bigger problem. Part of my stiffness is caused by swelling and scar tissue which are normal parts of healing. I hope the scar tissue will breakdown and this will get resolved. Jack told me sometimes people need surgery to get the scar tissue removed. Hopefully, I am not there.

Nevertheless, I want my leg to be normal again. I gave the dog a bath in the bathtub yesterday, which was a challenge without kneeling on the bathroom floor. Today, I walked to our car maintenance place to pick up our car after it's oil change. The place is about a ten minutes walk from our house, but today it took me twenty minutes. Walking down hills are hard, and our house is near the stop of a steep one. At one point going down the hill this afternoon, I stopped and checked my email on phone. I wasn't physically tired, but tired from having to be so careful with every step.

The good news is I know that this isn't just in my head. There is a physical reason why I have to think about my knee every time I sit up, sit down, or move. It doesn't hurt and it isn't uncomfortable, but I really wish it could be normal again soon.