Over the past week or so, my knee has been very achy and sore. It feels like I've taken a step backwards in terms of healing. But I don't know if that is because I have been able to do more, so I'm using the knee more, so it hurts more.

Especially since I moved this past weekend and was packing for the week before, I am inclined not to worry as much as if the knee had just suddenly started hurting with no environmental changes. I have had terrible swelling at the end of the day, with sock marks about a quarter of an inch deep, but I don't want to spend my time worrying just yet. I'll give it another week to get settled in to my new house and new routine, and if it's still swollen and achy then, I will ask someone about it.

The last couple of physio sessions have been pretty ordinary. On Tuesday I rode the exercise bike at 10 mph. On Thursday I complained about my knee aching, so Julie didn't make me do too much: she just put the electrotherapy things on my leg (the ones that leave marks like there's been an octopus attached to me).

Bruise update: about three days ago I noticed that the inner part of the bruise, which had previously faded to a yellow beige, had become sort of light brown. What's left of the bruise is located right behind my knee, in an oval shape, with a small line of bruise below it that extends downward about an inch. The purple outline has disappeared completely, except for two small faded spots on either side of the bruise.

So now my bruise looks like an outline of one of those big-headed almond-eyed aliens, only the bruise alien is brown with a fringe of purple-red hair above where each ear would be, if it had human ears.

Also, my scars are starting to fade. I have been religiously rubbing them down with Vitamin E oil. At night I have started putting Vaseline on them before I go to bed, on the recommendation of a woman here at work whose husband had the same surgery. The first night I used the Vaseline I was surprised--even as early as the next day, the Vaseline appeared to have faded the scars more than the Vitamin E oil of the previous days. I suppose it could be a cumulative effect.

My knee and leg are still slightly puffy and swollen. I forgot to mention that Julie said that the swelling could last for months!

Today in physiotherapy I rode a bike! Granted, it was a stationary bike, and I went 5 mph for about 3 minutes, but it was still progress.

Julie was pleased with my walk. She said it looks a lot better than it did two days ago. I can see that I'm not limping as much, and it doesn't feel as exaggerated as before.

I told her that I was getting some pain below my kneecap, and she suggested pressing down on the top of it when I massage it, so that the bottom of it tips upward. She said there might be some swelling below the top of the kneecap that is pushing it upward, causing the bottom point to sit too heavily on the bone below it. Makes sense to me, and it certainly did feel better after she showed me how to massage it.

She is also massaging the tendons on either side of my knee when I first go in. My knee never seems to go as straight as it can when I first enter the physio room, but massaging those tendons seems to relax it.

My extension is somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees, and my flexion is at 110 degrees--and I pushed it to around 115 on the bike! Woohoo!

She introduced me to a new exercise today. I bend my injured knee to put it on a step, then put my hands on the wall and lean forward over the step, which bends my knee further. Then I move back and forth, controlling the bend of my knee by how much I lean into the wall. This exercise helps increase my flexion.

Julie was good to me today. She didn't make me do the biofeedback machine, which I always find to be really disheartening! It always seems like I try harder and harder, but the biofeedback machine just says my muscles are getting weaker and weaker.

After telling me that I was naughty for thinking about the negative (asking how I would know if my graft were damaged), she said that my knee would start going out from under me all the time, that I might have some pain, and that the Lachmann's test (the one where they tug on your tibia to see if it's stable relative to the femur) would reveal instability. None of those things are really happening, besides some pain under the kneecap--and that seems to get less painful day by day. She said that the big pop I felt a few days ago is natural and isn't anything to worry about.

We did the regular stretching exercises, and then she assessed my gait. She told me to swing my leg from the knee in front of a mirror, so I could see how the knee is supposed to move while walking. Then she had me walk across the room, watching myself walk in the mirror. I could see that I wasn't swinging my leg--instead, I was carrying the lower leg through the step using the thigh.

Once I could see what was wrong, I was able to swing my leg, which produced a more normal-looking walk. The first time I swung the leg, it hurt! but after that, I could see in the mirror how much more normal the walk was, even though the swing felt exaggerated. I'm sure it will feel exaggerated at first, then just settle back into my normal, pre-injury walk. I'm already limping less while trying to put the swing into practice.

I see Julie again on Thursday.

Report on the bruise: it is now a beigey-yellow color on the inside, with a purple outline!

All seems to be pretty good with my leg now. I am still limping, but I feel like I'm getting somewhere, if very very slowly, with my range of motion.

Since I went for the ultrasound, my leg has stopped being so horrendously swollen. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that I've also stopped taking the Diclofenac again. I think it probably does.

The only thing I worry about now is that I'm getting a lot of pain right under my kneecap. It's just like when you touch a hard toothbrush bristle to an exposed root on your tooth, if that makes any sense. It's a really sharp, bad pain (not a good pain, like when you stretch), and it happens when I bend my knee, or sometimes just when I'm walking. I don't think I had this sort of pain before, and I don't like it.

I still feel like there's something blocking my kneecap from extending fully, too--just like when my ligament was all curled up inside my kneecap, before the arthroscopy--but that could just be my shortened hamstring. The only other thing is the terrible popping that my kneecap is doing. The physiotherapist gave me a very convincing explanation of why the weakened muscles in my knee and leg can allow that to happen, and she reassured me that it shouldn't cause any damage over a short period of time, but damn.

Earlier today I felt an almighty pop, and it felt deep in my knee. But I wasn't twisting; I was only doing my regular bending and stretching exercises. I'll assume for now that it wasn't my whole reconstructed ligament just audibly popping out of place.

Yesterday I woke up and my leg was so swollen and sore that I could barely walk. I decided to call in to work and tell my manager that I wasn't coming in. She was off yesterday, so I had to speak to her manager instead. He seemed sort of dismissive (I found out later that he was in a meeting when I called, so I shouldn't take it personally) so I decided that if my knee was going to react, I couldn't just favor it all the time, so I went into work anyway.

I left slightly early to go to the doctor at 6, and he seemed slightly worried about the swelling, and immediately booked me in for an ultrasound on my leg today. He was concerned that I could have a blood clot, which could be dangerous, but he was fairly sure that I was actually ok, and that the swelling is just down to the fact that I'm walking around more and sitting at my desk at work.

The ultrasound was pretty cool; I had never seen one in real life before. The technician (who looked tongue-numbingly like Rob Lowe, yowza) said that I don't have any major clots in or above the knee, so there's no reason to worry. He said I might have some small clots in my calf, but that's normal. Hurray!

Anyway, back to yesterday. I was concerned that it would hurt when the stitches came out, but it was actually fine. It stung for a couple of seconds, but there was no real pain. Dr Lavelle tested my graft and said it felt good and solid. He said that I would probably feel it if I damaged my graft, but that realistically you don't know if there are problems with the graft until later on. However, he seemed optimistic that it's fine and in place.

My cartilage, which had been slightly damaged, has healed now. Also, the feeling I had lost around my incision area has come back. He said that I can swim and cycle now, but that I should wait about 6 weeks before doing yoga or any vaguely twisty exercises, or even sitting cross-legged or doing the breaststroke. I can start running between 3 and 6 months from now. He said I shouldn't worry for now about wearing any sort of functional brace for any of the activities. He wants to see me again in 6 weeks, so I'll ask him again then about wearing a functional brace.

He's happy for me to start working on flexion past 90 degrees, but he stressed that it's most important for me to get my extension back, which I already knew.

I cancelled my physiotherapy appointment today, which was scheduled before my ultrasound, because I was worried that if I did have a clot, I might dislodge it and give myself some sort of pulmonary embolism (bad). Now that I know my swelling is nothing to worry about, I can renew my physiotherapy work with vigor! I haven't done any real stretching exercises for a couple of days because the swelling has been so painful and I've been afraid to massage my leg, but now I'm going to go take a hot bath and try to reduce it a little bit with my tried and tested "put my leg in the air and massage it with oil" trick. (Hello, dodgy Google searchers!)

I just got back from my second physiotherapy session and, even though I'm at work, I thought I would give a quick update.

Yesterday was my first day back at work, and by the time I got home in the evening, my leg was really swollen. After I elevated it for about an hour, it really improved, and I was still able to stretch out almost as much as the past few days.

Today the physio measured my extension at around 10 degrees. We're not really working on my flexion right now because I haven't got official permission to start moving past 90 degrees yet, but I see the doctor tomorrow. I am pretty happy with 90 degrees now, so I suspect with some work I could get up to about 100 degrees of flexion.

Tomorow I get my brace officially off (not that I've really been wearing it all that much) and my stitches removed!

On the 29th of May I wrote that I could straighten my leg to the same extension as before the surgery. I don't know if I have regressed since then, but I definitely don't have the same extension now as I did right before the surgery. I'm bending the knee probably about 10 degrees, but I do stretching exercises every day from the moment I wake up to the time I go to bed, so I'm sure it's coming slowly, day by day.

The past couple of days since my first physio appointment have been very sore, probably because I've actively been pushing my muscles and stretching as much as possible. Today, though, I feel a lot more flexible. I haven't been working on flexion really actively, but I can easily bend to 90 degrees now. I am not pushing it beyond that at the moment because the doctor locked my brace at 90 degrees and wanted me to wear it that way until I see him on Wednesday. I'll ask him then if I can start bending it more (another question for my list).

Over the last two or three days, there has been a real difference between my straight-leggedness and my bent-leggedness. By that I mean that if I tried to stretch out straight, I could get really good extension, but as soon as I did that, I couldn't bend as much. In the same way, if I sat with my leg bent for a while, I couldn't get any extension at all afterward without some real work. But today there has been a breakthrough. I can sit with my leg bent and then immediately get to a good extension, or I can stretch out and immediately get 90 degrees of flexion. I count that as progress, even if I can't stretch to a couple more degrees today.

(I don't know if this breakthrough has more to do with my activity or that for the first time last night I broke down and took some Diclofenac, which is an anti-inflammatory, for the first time since I came back from the hospital. Previously I haven't taken any because I took it after my arthroscopy and ended up with some swelling in my legs. Since I was having so much edema, I didn't want to irritate it even more with medicine that causes the same thing!)

The edema and general swelling also aren't too bad today at all. I think the first couple of days after my first physio appointment were a wake-up call for my legs, and they definitely complained about it!

About now, I'm starting to feel exactly like I did right after my arthroscopy. The swelling is going down in my knee (I can see a hint of kneecap), and nothing really hurts too badly. I am limping, and I can't bend my leg fully or straighten it fully.

I am getting some edema, but this time I can combat it slightly more easily because my wounds aren't fresh, so I can take a nice hot bath (as long as I'm wearing my waterproof bandage over my main incision). The knee feels somehow "full," which is probably due to internal swelling.

I discovered last night while changing my bandage that the skin around my main incision is completely numb. I am guessing that they managed to damage some nerves with the incisions. I wonder if the feeling will ever come back. I suppose that if it doesn't, it's no big deal. A square inch of numb skin right below the knee isn't really going to affect my life in any major way. I'd quite like it not to be numb, though.

To ask my doctor:
1) Will the feeling come back in the area below my knee?
2) How will I know if I damage my graft?
3) When will I see him again for another checkup?
4) When can I start swimming? Cycling? Running?
5) Should I be wearing a functional brace for any of the above activities? For how long?

Physio today was really good. My new therapist's name is Julie, and she is very cool. She helped me set up my brace so it's not quite so painful on my shin, and she moved my kneecap around, hooked me up to a biofeedback machine that tells me when I'm moving my muscles properly to help me get my full extension back, and then tested my flexion.

She said she wants to get me into some hyperextension, but she's not going to be too concerned about getting all of the hyperextension back because it's not necessarily a good thing to have knees that hyperextend. I am going to have twice-weekly appointments with her, Tuesdays and Thursdays at lunchtime are what I've set up for the next couple of weeks.

She disapproves of my avoidance of my brace, but that's ok since she helped me fit it a little better.

My bruise on the back of my leg is now a beautiful rainbow of red, purple, brown, green, blue, and yellow. It's vertical, about 4 inches long and 2 inches wide, right behind my kneecap.

Yesterday I was very worried about my graft, and I think the more I thought about it, the more it hurt, whether it was actually injured or not. So I took some Coproxamol before I went to bed (the first painkillers in a couple of days) and then some more at 6 this morning.

The knee seems fine today--it's no more achy than it has been over the past couple of days, and no more swollen either. I'm sure it's fine. Other people on the message board have said that they have done similar things to their knees shortly after surgery and everything seems to be ok with them.

My little stab wounds seem ok too. I have been putting Neomycin cream on them but leaving them uncovered. I haven't looked at the other incision since I rebandaged it. Sometimes it's slightly itchy, but it doesn't hurt. What hurts is my shin, which has a big yellow bruise all along the front of it, directly underneath one of the brace's straps. Like I said, I'll be glad to get this brace off.

I start physiotherapy tomorrow, and I start working from home again today.

Today I couldn't stand it. I removed both of the waterproof dressings and the steri-strips. The three tiny little stab wounds are pretty much like they were after I removed the bandage from the arthroscopy, so I've not bothered to re-dress them. The larger 1-inch cut is slightly oozier, with lots of bruised skin around it, so I've recovered it with another Opsite Post-Op dressing, which is waterproof and also cushions the wound from the brace.

I had a scary paranoid moment a few minutes ago. I went to get up from the sofa and managed to stumble and land slightly harder on my repaired leg than I would have liked. I am now paranoid about re-tearing my graft. There's a great message board here, so I've posted a question about how I can know if I've reinjured myself. Maybe someone with previous experience of re-tearing a graft (or previous experience of bouncing around a lot without re-tearing a graft) can give me something to ease my paranoia.