Re: Flattening your knee

[Guest guest]

Another thing that works well is when in bed for the night, laying flat on your

back, lay your other leg over that knee, pressing down, put pressure on it......

I did that and my straight was perfect. I on the other hand, had all the

trouble with bending, still am and am still working hard on it.

But the physical therapist told me that flattening the leg and getting it

straight was actually more important..... than the flex....and they didn't tell

me that right after surgery. They didn't tell me that until months later. It

was just a good thing I did what I did.

I think they should tell you what to do and why always. For one thing, no one

told me to flex my knee. Ever. I just went to therapy and did what they told

me to, but there might have been a lot more I could have done early on.......had

I understood better. Always education for us is so important.......dash

Flattening your knee

We always hear so much about regaining knee flexion - and most of us put our

biggest effort into that. But I had an interesting experience with the other

side of that: " flattening " that I would like to share because I think it bears

heavily and how happy we are with our new knees after a few months.

My tkr was in May of this year. My PT had mentioned flattening but did not seem

to really push it that much so I confess that I did not realize how important it

was. I did the appropriate exercise (putting a rolled towel under calf then

pushing gently down on knee)but I can't say I was too enthusiastic about it,

especially in first weeks when I felt vulnerable.

When I had my 6 week checkup with my surgeon he measured my flexion which he

said was fine for where I was at then (110 at 6 weeks) but my flattened knee was

not great (don't remember number). He told me too many people blow off this part

of the rehab and are then very unhappy with their knee later. I asked for

further clarification because I still did not understand what the big deal was.

I could stand just fine, right?

He said that when we stand we need to be able to lock in our knee joint so that

our weight is directly on the joint. If we cannot do this it means that our

quads are carrying all our weight and they will start to scream at us if we

stand any length of time. This leads people to believe that their knee

replacement is no good, not an improvement.

So I went home and put a little more effort into flattening my knee. But not

that much effort.

So fast forward a few weeks to holidays and we are in a museum, walking and

standing in front of exhibits. After about 20 minutes my " knee " starts screaming

at me. My first reaction is huge disappointment that my tkr has been so useless

that I cannot even stand in front of an exhibit. After an hour of now intense

pain I went out to the lobby, took off my shoe and put my feet up on the couch

to rest and stop the pain.

With my legs flat out like that the pain continued to get worse. A lightbulb

went on in my head. I swung around back into a sitting position with my knees

bent - voila - pain diminishes and disappears. I had been using my quads to hold

me upright when standing - not my knee joint.

Sooooooo back in the van I spent the next couple of weeks of travel with my feet

extended up on the dash (when I was the passenger, not the driver . I could

really feel the pull of this on the back of my knee in comparison to the other

knee which was comfortable extended like this. In fact, I could only do it for a

minute or two at first, leading me to understand how important this was.

But after two weeks of this I was comfortable for much longer periods of time.

When we spent another day in a museum I had an entirely different experience.

MUCH more comfortable. I am continuing to work on this until I get to the point

where, when extended like that, both knees feel the same. One of the ways I do

this at home is when I read the paper in the morning, I extend my leg out on a

hassock with a pillow under the ankle so it is raised and really extended. Then

I drape some ankle weights over the knee itself. (the kind you strap to your

ankles to go walking). It could be anything, but you need to add some weight to

your knee to push it down. The PT recommended this - it's not just my

harebrained idea

So ...just wanted to share this as it has a huge effect on how functional our

new knees are and how happy we are with the results. And I had no idea HOW

important the flattening part of the equation was.

Carolyn

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