post-op knee surgery, how much longer to "normal"

[Reesha]

Not all doctors perform all surgeries. I was lucky to get the top sports medicine guy at MUSC (Medical University of South Carolina), who performed an aggressive procedure.

If your knee is perfect with the cadaver, then the hamstring tendon may have been overkill (no pun intended), my knee was quite bad.

Indeed it sounds nasty! Mine was a partial tear that eventually ruptured completely. It was wacky times, the years I spent without an ACL without knowing it... my knee did all kinds of unusual things!

[Artista]

Another thought...my foot seems to roll heel-to-toe better as I increase the strength in my atrophied calf and ankle muscles. Is there any chance that you've lost strength in your calf and ankle during your knee ordeal? If so, you could try strengthening those muscles to see if it helps your foot to roll better. One of the things that I've learned in PT is to not ignore the muscles in the front of my calf. I had never considered working the front of my calf before my muscles atrophied but it turns out that those muscles are as important to walking properly as are the muscles in the back of the calf.

[Gypsy]

I had ACL surgery too, but not with a cadaver... They gave me that option, but told me it wouldn't last as long either, so they took a piece of tendon from my knee (rather than hamstring). Also, from a sports medicine doctor, who tend to be more aggressive and focused on letting you go back to sports.

I didn't feel "normal" until about a year later, after surgery. I had PT for many weeks, but even after that was over, I wasn't with full movement/flexibility. I had to get "second" dose of PT about 5 years later to "tune up".

I was able to ski 18 months after surgery with no problem whatsoever.

Now, 10 years post surgery, I can tell you that I think that knee is better than the non-surgery knee and I joke that I need to get surgery on the second one to match the first.

[bmccasland]

Thank you everyone for the input.

"Patience Grasshopper" seems to be the overall message At least I have a time frame now.

Artista - I'll put retro-walking on my self-PT menu. Figure it can't hurt.

My surgeon harvested part of a tendon from my hamstring. I find if I'm on my feet a lot - especially standing around, my knee hurts the next day.

[ny biker]

I also remember that most of my friends thought my ankle should have healed in a few months, and they assumed I was just being a whiny hypochondriac if I said that I couldn't walk someplace with them. I lived in NYC at the time, so we often walked to restaurants and bars, and merely saying I would take a cab and meet them there would make some of them angry.

But when I went to the doctor for a checkup, everyone I dealt with at his office would tell me the pace of healing wasn't unusual. Scar tissue slowed me down a bit at first, but the doctor took care of that in a follow-up procedure.

(A few years later one of these friends had knee surgery and had problems with scar tissue, and they were all very sympathetic to him.

I'm not friends with those people anymore. )

[bmccasland]

The trainer at my gym (who wouldn't start me on a program until I was cleared by an orthopod) has me on a program starting with my PT exercises, then working with weights, sit-ups on an exercise ball, and then 20 quality time minutes on the treadmill. I am getting better, but a tad impatient.

We all want the buff body after 6 weeks, right?