Update on My Knee Injury


It has now been a little more than six weeks since my knee injury. Here’s a quick update on what’s happened since then. Mostly good news.


I have been diligent with my physical therapy exercises (Thanks, Traci!), I am now able to walk as much as two miles on a flat track without using my brace. Beyond that, the knee starts talking to me, and I don’t want to push my luck. I can tell, however, that the muscle system around my knee is gaining strength. It’s now close to par with that of my left knee, the uninjured knee.

I still wear the brace now, but only when I am going to be with crowds of people. For example, I wear it when I am going to the grocery store or the hardware store, and I wear it to church. In the past I’ve worn my brace into physical therapy sessions, but yesterday I decided to walk into and out of the physical therapy session with no brace.

I always wear the brace whenever I’m doing any work on the farm or even just walking around. The terrain is uneven and uncertain, so that’s a no-brainer. Amanda and I are headed to the farm next week, and we hope to get several chores done, so I expect to stay pretty friendly with the brace all of next week.

I don’t wear the brace around the house or the office, however, and that means I’m regularly climbing steps without it.

I have started driving my Vespa again. I always wear the brace when I do, but I know it wouldn’t help me much if I had an accident.

I have a cane that I purchased so I could walk from the bed to the toilet in the middle of the night without stopping to put on my brace. It’s been gathering dust leaning against my bedside table for the last 2-3 weeks.

I have always been a fairly “active” consumer of information when someone I love is having medical issues, trying to learn as much as I could on the Internet to supplement and help interpret what we were hearing from the medical staff. I just realized last night that I never asked Dr. Young’s office to send me a copy of my MRI summary, so I plan to do that today. I would like to read it before my next visit with him and understand as many of the terms as possible, so I’ll have questions ready for him when we meet.

It’s really about time for us to schedule a follow-up visit with Dr. Young, but I’ll be gone all of next week and on jury duty the week of March 23, so it looks as if it will be early April before I’m actually in his office.

Here’s the summary of my follow-up meeting with Dr. Young.

Leave a comment