Recovery : After 10 Months & 8 Days

I am already near to a year after my surgery. Recovery been good. There are, of course, ups and downs with my recovery progress.

At Month 9 of my recovery, my therapists had got me started to run on the treadmill. I started with speed 3.5 and gradually increase the speed and now I am slowly jogging and limping (yes, I limp) and walking, all at the same time at speed 5.3 (this is my maximum speed so far).

I cannot jog for too long. And when I said long, the duration is like about 2 minutes. The jogging regime is pretty frustrating at times because I want to jog the longest possible time like at least for 2 minutes before I stop for brisk walking. To this very point, it has yet to materialized.

The goal is there still and I am not giving up. The goal I laid out to my orthopedic doctor was to gain mobility that a normal person has. That was basically the idea of this long ordeal I need to go through.

My weight has been going up and down pretty much like a yoyo. I tried my best to keep my weight below 64 kg. This is the maximum weight that my knees can take and nothing more. The best record I have with my weight is 61.2 kg. That was before Christmas last year. Last Saturday, I was standing at 61.8kg. The week before was the bad one where I stood at 62.8 kg. It was bad and I need not need to stand on the weighing scale to know I had put on weight because my calves were tight and my knees were aching a little bit.

Should I say I have the best weight trigger of all time? Maybe. Looking at the bright side of it is that I need not need a weighing scale to tell me that I put on weight.

Now is payback time. Drink more water. Much lesser carb intake. And yes, more sweating need to be done.

Week 22 of Recovery : VMO is UP!

I could not contend my happiness! Finally, my VMO ( in short for vastus medialis oblique ) is showing some sign of existance!

In case you did not know where exactly this muscle is, I personally think picture speaks louder than words. Here you go.

Yes. A picture of Christiano Ronaldo would do the trick. All atheletes have them. Even some of the not-so-active people have them too. 

VMO's main function is to control knee extension while keeping the patellar at the right position. As a patient, myself, I come to understand that the VMO is actually responsible for the prevention of patellar femoral pain. 

I may not be an orthopedic expert or even a physiotherapist. But, believe me, this is the most layman way of explaining. I wish I took a photo of my non-exist VMO and VL ( short for vastus lateralis ) 10 months ago to have this all recorded down. But, I did not. I shall take a video or a photo of my current progress though.

Joey was glad that my VMO is finally popping out. 10 long months of work and it paid off. Now is my mission to keep it popping out. The more popping-out it is, it means the stronger it gets and that means the tension pain while doing IRQ will also reduce. 

Talking about IRQ, there is also great progress while doing it this week. I was able to bear 0.91 kg of weight. Both knees have very different capabilities. While the right knee had the weight on the ankle, the left had to start off with the weight below the knee cap. At the count of 20s onwards, I slowly adjust the weight to the shin and eventually to my left ankle. There were still pain on both knees. But, tolerable. 

The type of exercises I did was these :-

For the exercise above, I have yet to be able to achieve the single leg bending. There are more to be done in order to reach that stage. I did a repetition of 50.

I can occasionally do a full wall squat with the help of the gym ball. What I intend to achieve now is consistency in terms of full 45 degree bending. Depending on my situation on the day itself, a minimum of 30 repetition is required and if I am in good shape, it will be 50.

I did this one during yesterday's session of physiotherapy. A repetition of 500 quick contraction followed by repetition of 30 with each repetition I need to hold for 10 seconds.

Planking, on the other hand, is not that fun. I sensed myself having weight gain. I brought this to the therapists and the senior therapist was wondering if it was weight gain or muscle gain. Good question. I do not know.