Early Stage Rehabilitation Exercises

These are the exercises I've been given to do so far.

All of them are carried out sitting upright in bed with my back supported and my "good" leg flexed up for support.

I have no idea what the official "names" for these exercises are, so I've just made up my own!

1. Ankle Circles

• Circling the ankles clockwise and anticlockwise, 5 times each way to warm up

2. Ankle Stretches

• Pull my foot backwards towards me until I feel the stretch in my calf muscle, hold for 5 seconds, release, then point toes forward away from me as far as possible, hold for 5, release. Repeat 5 times.

 

• An extenstion to this when the ankle needed extra work was to use a ribbon (or other non-elasticated object such as towel) to hook under the foot and use to pull my foot backwards towards me, hold for 5, release.

3. Knee presses

• Push the back of the knee down into the bed/sofa/floor. Hold for 5. Repeat 5 times. I find it useful to place a rolled up towel, pillow or even hand underneath the knee to give something to press down onto, it helps to get the exact movement that you need to work the correct muscle in the correct way.

4. Knee presses with quad squeezes

• Flex foot backwards, push back of knee down and squeeze quad muscle at top of thigh. Hold for 5. Repeat 5 times. (I'm not sure if this exercises my quads or my bum more, but either way it has to be beneficial!).

5. Supported Heel Slides

• I only move onto these after I've done the exercises above so that my leg is sufficiently warmed up. Place a plastic bag or something slippy underneath my heel. Someone holds my foot in one hand and slides the other underneath my knee for support. Slowly pull my heel back towards me, hold for 5 (if possible), then slide heel back down. Flex ankle to help release the stretched muscle. Repeat 5 times. REST!!!
• See diagram below - plus hands for support

6. Unsupported Heel Slides

• Like it says on the box ... as above, but without the support. I find that I can't achieve as much bend like this, but still do them as I feel its building my confidence and quad strength even if its not improving the ROM.

* At the moment I am just doing 1/2 sets of each exercise during each "workout", depending on how sore and/or tired I am. I am trying to do at least some of the exercises every couple of hours for now.

(Diagrams in this post are credited to the websites they are linked to)

The First Physio Therapy Session

30 December 2011

Four weeks and four days after my surgery I went to meet my physio therapist for the first time. The session took over an hour and was bascially an assessment of how things were doing. We chatted about the details of my accident and injury and then she took a look at my leg. With the splint removed I felt very vulnerable. My leg felt weak and the muscles in my thigh had shrunken down to almost nothing. She was very gentle though and worked with me to build my trust and confidence as she started by gently running her fingers over my leg and progressing to very gentle massaging movements around my knee. The tissue around my knee had hardened in places and she showed me how to massage it slowly with lotion to start to losen it. Despite doing lots of foot flexes over the weeks, I wasn't able to flex it back far enough to her liking so she showed me how to exercise this to improve and strengthen the range of movement in my ankle. She needed to check with the consultant how much she was allowed to push my knee, so for now, she did a couple of test flexes ... which revealed a rather dire Range of Movement (ROM) in the joint, almost zero in fact! She showed me another exercise for my quads and checked how I was walking with the crutches to make sure my posture was ok. I got the ok to open the splint myself at home for washing, massaging and exercising my ankle and quads.