Knee Update

By Tom Morrone

I am now 12 weeks post op from knee replacement surgery and all is well. Thank you to all that sent well wishes and words of encouragement….they were greatly appreciated. I am still highly motivated regarding my physical therapy and have been holding to a steadfast daily regime of some sort. There are sessions that I may not work as long as other days but a day does not go by where I am not doing some combination of heat, stretching, range of motion exercise and ice. Most days I do all of those because that is the way to success. You can’t delegate the physical therapy.

Looking back over the past 12 weeks, I have made tremendous progress. I can now get in and out of the car with little trouble. Stairs do not intimidate me anymore though I am not running up flights two stairs at a time. Going down stairs is not a problem either as that direction is a little more difficult. I am not looking for the handrail as a savior anymore but just knowing it is available is comforting. I definitely do not have my full range of motion but I am gaining a little more flexion each day and the limp is nonexistent and I am pain free. A newly acquired skill set since surgery is I am a pretty accurate weather man now and can tell when the rain is coming. The knee gets really stiff and it is obvious something is going on. Movement is the key and idleness is my enemy. The longer I sit the stiffer the knee becomes. I try to get up and walk around or just flex my knee to keep it fluid. You got to do what you got to do.

My first attempt at the driving range to hit golf balls for the first time was extremely painful. It was not the knee that was hurting it was my golf swing that was borderline critical. After several bath mat size divots I was remembering how to hit that darn little white ball. As I continued to hit balls, the painful terrible shots began to get less and less and the occasional perfect shot would happen. I would look around at the range and hope someone “saw that one”. Of course the other people on the driving range could care less about me because they were having their own problems to deal with. I did not want to overdo hitting balls for the first time so I decided to play a few holes. I played 9 holes with a cart and was quite surprised at how well I played, at least for the most part. One reason I believe is that I was very cautious and went easy with my club speed and that resulted in cleaner hits and never had to yell FORE. It felt great to be back on the course and hopefully I can sneak a fair amount of rounds of golf in over the second part of the season.

One thing I know now and have always know is that exercise will be part of my future on an ongoing basis for some time if not forever. That movement of the joints is so vital to keeping flexibility. Stretching is also a key component to that flexibility. I do not want you to think I am Jack LaLanne or anything but just like physical therapy, exercise can’t be delegated either.

So here’s to 1,2,3,4…breathe!

Until The Next Tom’s Take…