The Straight Leg Raise Challenge

A few weeks ago, one of the physio therapists I saw told me that until I could do a straight leg lift, I wouldn't be able to begin to think about walking without some sort of support (aka frame or crutches). Well, finally, 12 weeks post-op, I managed to do three! It hurt like hell but I did them and felt rather smug afterwards too.

A straight leg raise is one of the initial tests for a broken patella. I was asked in A & E on the night of my accident to lift my leg and was met with a knowing look from the doctor when I failed dismally. The mechanism for carrying out the straight leg raise involves the quad muscles, the patella and the ligaments above and below it. If the patella is shattered, there is no sturdy lever to facilitate the raise. So, given the nature of my injury combined with the state of my wasted quads by the time the fracture was fixed, a straight leg raise was going to take some time!

The physio showed me how to carry out the actions necessary to trigger the movement, even though I couldn't actually see it through. This involved pulling my foot back at the ankle, pushing my knee down to lock the leg straight and then engaging the quads to give the power needed to lift the leg. Well, she may as well have been asking me to lift a ten tonne weight! There was no way on earth my leg was going to lift off the bed, not yet anyway.

For three weeks after she showed me the procedure, I religiously went through the motions at the end of my increasing physio routine. Ankle back, knee locked, quads engaged .... nothing! Well, nothing apart from the pathetic shaking and trembling up and down my thigh.

Acknowledging that my quads had by now finally started to wake up and say hello, the physio announced that "we" were actually going to do a straight leg lift now. I began to go through the motions again, not imagining for one second that it would achieve anything other than a wobble. She told me that it was ok for me to bend my knee just a tiny bit in order to get the lift going. Then as she shouted at me to "go on, lift, lift, LIFT" I felt a sharp tugging just above my knee cap and suddenly, my leg started to lift slowly off the bed! Instantly, I shut my eyes tight and concentrated on slowly lowering it the 20 or so inches back down, terrified that it would crash back down with a bump. I'm not sure who was the most elated, her or me! She made me do it again, this time with my eyes open to "train" my brain to work with my leg again.

So the straight leg lift was now added to my physio regime and I can now (2 weeks later) do a set of 10 lifts, raising my leg higher than I can lift my good leg!. The first couple still hurt like hell, and I'm still wary of my quads giving way (not that they have at all), but the strength that I'm building up as a result of being able to do this is helping my walking progress no end. Like they say, no pain, no gain...