6 Weeks

Six weeks have passed. Things have gotten easier in many ways. Some things are still hard. It hurts to move my leg around. If I sit with my knee straight then it tends to lock up and it is hard to get it bent. Whenever I bend my knee I need to warm it up to get any significant range of motion. Even with warming up, I can't seem to get much past 120 degrees. I still have swelling, and my foot still turns purple if I don't keep my leg at least up even with my body.

I think all this is normal, and it's not horrible. It's just a statement of where I am now. I am done with the CPM, which is a relief. Using that all the time was getting annoying.

For some reason I had gotten it in my head that I would start working towards full-weight bearing at 8 weeks, and that is what I told a lot of people. I looked at the phase II recovery protocol and that's not what it says. At 6 weeks, I can do 25% weight. At 8 weeks, I can do 50% weight. I can't even begin to wean off the crutches until 9-10 weeks. It will probably take another 2 weeks to wean off, I think. Oh well. What's another few weeks on crutches at this point?