I updated my DPT and told her about all this new soreness and swelling. I wanted to know if I was doing anything wrong or grin and bear it (lots of people mention just pushing through pain, but that kind of ruins my week!)
Everything she says is so reassuring, like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be right now! Her explanation was that my knee is still building. The soreness and swelling is the knee getting overwhelmed because it's reaching its capacity ceiling. The brain is there to protect me and my knee. It is not telling me I'm damaging the knee, but it is telling me to adjust some current load so that I can keep on going and keep building. Sometimes I build and we hit a plateau - so all the tissues need to adjust to the load again. Put on repeat! When I had surgery, the forces from simply walking on the ground were massive and this used to really stir up the knee. The tissues were not used to this load because they were above my capacity. Now I'm doing more athletic things, and the symptoms come on once again. I have met my capacity for this level and let time do its thing so the tissues have time to adapt. Probably a good idea to back of some biking mileage and vert and do easier biking. I think I'll stop the TRX squats for a while too. This was also the answer to why at 17 months my knee gets easily overwhelmed compared to someone else at 17 months. Time is just not the only factor! Loads and capacities are as well. Sounds so simple, but when you're in pain and needing take more rest days that you want, it's hard to understand what is happening. Now I have a really good answer. Then I remembered this graph I saw on Twitter @scotmorrsn that perfectly illustrates exactly what my DPT was explaining. Then it all seemed like it was OK and normal. It will keep happening in fact! If I weren't testing my capacity ceilings and having no symptoms, I'd probably be frustrated with how slow it all was going. DPT reminded me that even though I had a very rough start to ACL recovery (summary: I started over at month 11 postop), the body is amazing and the brain is even more so, and I will get back to my life. I just started in a different place than others. Now that soreness has lessened a bit, the question is: do I do PT rehab tonight or do I do an easy bike ride? Hmm... Normally Wednesday is not a PT night, but I lost a few days with the extra rest. Probably an easy bike because I can keep it short as a test. Gym always takes like 2 hours.
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AuthorA 45 year old active female who tore her ACL in January 2017 (at the age of 40). Reconstructive surgery in February 2017 with bone-patellar tendon-bone autograft. Archives
November 2022
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