Physical Therapy

I have major knee issues.  When I was in 6th grade, I dislocated my knee for the first time.  It was horrible.  I took a break from dance classes and eventually quit dance altogether.  I was still very sporty and active.  Until it happened again.  And again.

In high school it got worse.  When it would dislocate, it would stay dislocated until a doctor popped it back into place.  The pain was excruciating.  But it didn’t happen often--maybe once a year or once every other year.  Slowly I began to become less active.

By the time I had my children, I was mostly sedentary.  I had gained a good bit of weight.  Although some of the weight has to do with my eating habits, I also know that some of it has to do with my sedentary lifestyle.  By the time I was an adult, both of my knees had dislocated multiple times.  About seven years ago, one of my knees started locking up on me.  I went to physical therapy and eventually had an MRI done.  It appears that my knee cap was actually tilted.  

So they did surgery--patellar realignment with tibial osteotomy.  They basically cut ligaments that were pulling my patella the wrong way, repaired ligaments that were stretched out on the other side, and then cut a chunk of bone out of my tibia where the ligament attaches that goes directly over the top of my knee and moved the bone over so that the ligament would hold the knee tightly in place.  Not fun.  The recovery was the worst--I had to wait for the bone to heal before I could do physical therapy, which means that I lost muscle and then had to build it back up just to be able to even lift my leg!  I also had to break up a lot of scar tissue in order to learn how to bend my knee again.

A year and a half ago I had the same surgery done on the other knee.  My patellar groove is shallow on both legs, so my knees are more prone to dislocation than the normal person’s.  Now that I’ve had the surgeries and recovered (for the most part), my knees are less likely to dislocate--unless I put extreme stress on them.

But I still don’t feel confident.  My knees feel fairly weak, and I’m always terrified that something I do will cause a dislocation.  I went back to my orthopedist last week and talked to him about it.  I told him that I am planning on having weight loss surgery some day and that I want to make sure that in the future I am able to hike and kayak without fear for my knees.  He told me that he thought that was very reasonable and doable.  So he prescribed physical therapy to strengthen my knees.

I started physical therapy this week, and it isn’t fun.  My knees swell up and are sensitive and weak after I exercise.  But I keep reminding myself that every time I exercise, I am one step closer to being the person I want to be.  I don’t want to live my life in fear of injuring my knees--or worse, refusing to try to live at all.  So I will work hard and get my knees strong.