Tuesday, October 05, 2004

First official day of PT

Knee-plus-6 days, 5-Oct-2004, Tuesday:
First PT session. Standard exercises, plus some new things on the parallel bars. Abduction (foot to the side, both sides). Foot to the rear (both sides). Mini-squats [I noticed that I lean too much on the left (good) side, so I actually did a couple of one-legged squats on the right (TKR) leg, frightening the therapist]. Calf raises. Hamstring stretches.

Mat exercises included an interesting crossed-rope heel slide, and a calf stretch (quad set, but with a towel/rope under the ball of the foot, pulling back on the towel to stretch the calf).

I was told to bring the cane with me to the next PT session (Thursday). Told to focus on extension, that my flexion (ca. 95 degrees) was coming along fine.

There is a $30 per-visit co-pay with our Blue Cross plan. I squawked about the rate (figuring that it should be $30 per week, not per visit). The lead PT guy decided that I was far enough along (essentially working at the knee-plus-3 week rate on day 1) that I could reduce to 2X per week without harm.


I continued to walk around the driveway loop, 3X. And I duplicated the PT routine at home, once more today, and planning to do 2X per day, with or without formal PT
.