Limited movement in knee

Crazymonkey

Hi All,

Hope everyone is doing well.

As some of you may know from previous posts, I have bad osteoarthritis in both my knees yet have also been dealing with chronic septic arthritis.

I've been in hospital for a total of 50 days this year, had 9 surgeries in total including partial reconstruction of my knee by having a flap created from part of my calf muscle to fill gaps in my knee and a skin graft to cover it all after so much infected tissue was removed. Also needed 5 blood transfusions.

Been home for about a week now, yet still have nurses coming in daily to administer IV antibiotics.

My mobility seems to have gone downhill, I can't put my foot flat on the floor so walk on the ball of my foot, I also can't bend my knee fully, cant even get to 90 degrees in bend and can only straighten it to 41 degrees.

Problem is reason I can't bend or straighten it isn't due to pain or quad muscles tensing it's the actual knee that won't budge.

When I was still in hospital got physio to check for me if it was a muscle or joint issue by getting me to lie on my back and he manually moved my knee and even he confirmed not the muscles it's the joint itself.

Physio suggested sitting with ankle resting on a chair and trying to place heavy items on my knee to force it yet that doesn't seem to be doing much.

No matter how much or how often I do my physio I'm not seeing any improvement.

I've got my outpatient physio assessment later this week yet fully reliant on crutches and even then can't walk more than about 3 feet / 90 meters without being in agony to the point that I'm now using a wheelchair when out the house just so I'm not housebound

I'm on about 5 different pain medications including ones for nerve pain, I need to use a leg lifter or drag my leg by ankle or sock when getting out of bed or in and out of car.

Glad I'm out of hospital yet feel like I'm getting nowhere slowly.

Anyone else had these issues interms of limited bend and straighten ?

noddingtonpete

Hi @Crazymonkey I hope others will respond to you soon with their experiences. In the meantime have a look through the following and see if there is anything of use.

https://www.versusarthritis.org/about-arthritis/exercising-with-arthritis/exercises-for-healthy-joints/exercises-for-the-knees/

I hope you get some relief soon.

Bryony

That sounds very hard. I hope you get some useful help from your Physio appointment, and that you start to get some improvement.