It’s now been five weeks since my knee surgery, and things seem to be going well.

This morning I opened the brace up to 90 degrees of flexion. I can bend the knee 80 degrees without too much difficulty and will be working on those last 10 degrees this week. I have two physical therapy sessions a week. I begin with Russian stim —  ten seconds of electrical stimulus, ten seconds of rest — for 20 minutes During the stimulus, I work to contract my quadriceps as tightly as possible. Then, with the brace on, I work on bending the knee as much as possible, 30 reps on the table, 30 reps standing up. I then work the right leg on the hip machine in four directions with weights, followed by ankle flexes using a rubber band. Then electrostimulus and ice for 10 minutes. I do some version all of this, with the exception of the electrostimulus, each day. When I’m at the gym using the hip machine, I try to throw in some upper body exercises and a few exercises for the left leg.

Despite all the exercise, I’ve still loss muscle mass and tone in my right quad and thigh.

The incision is practically all healed, and the brusing on the inner part of the knee, above the site of the microfracture, is almost all gone. There’s little pain during the day, though I think I’ve felt a few arthritic twinges on the medial side in the last couple of days.

I see Dr. Feldman again two weeks from tomorrow. There’s the possibility that I’ll be able to begin putting weight on the right leg, if the X-rays show that the tibia has knitted properly.

I’m much stronger on my crutches than I was three weeks ago, but I’m really eager for this particular phase of the rehab to end.

But I’m grateful: there have been no setbacks or complications so far. I did fall on my ass the other night getting out of a cab in front of my building the other night: lost my balance trying to transfer one crutch from my right side to my left. I’m attributing that to the icy conditions at the time (rather than to the two martinis and glass of sake that I’d had at a friend’s house earlier.) About four people jumped to my aid and hauled me up. I think I must have looked quite picturesque. Luckily, nothing worse than a sore rump and a bit of wouned pride.