I had my second physical therapy session today as I recover from arthroscopic surgery on my right knee. Just to recap, I twisted my knee stepping in a hole on September 15th. I went to a walk-in clinic on September 23rd and got a referral to PT. After about 4 weeks of PT I only had minor improvement so I went to see and Orthopedic surgeon. Two weeks later I got MRI results showing a small tear in the medial meniscus. Last Tuesday I had the arthroscopic surgery. The doc found the small meniscal tear, some roughness on the tibular plateau and a thickened medial plica band. She repaired all three of these problems.
In my first post-op PT session I was evaluated and had good range of motion and a little bit of tenderness in some of the tissue around my knee. The swelling was almost completely gone. (This was 6 days after surgery.) The PT had me ride the exercise bike at low resistance for 14 minutes and then did ultrasound, massage, electrical stimulation and icing.
Today, 8 days post surgery, I had a different PT. He did the same treatments except for the massage. Rather than massaging the area immediately around my knee he got a stick, literally a stick about 1" in diameter, and used it to massage my right leg ilio tibial band. He rolled it to massage the tissue and located some very sore spots. He explained that these are adhesions where the ITB has adhered to the muscle. He said that this is important to break up so that my knee cap is not pulled to one side because of the tight / adhered ITB.
I looked up ITB massage using Google after the PT and found an especially good article on the Running Time website. I've added Running Times to the list of web sites and here is a link to the article.
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Ron, it is interesting to read about your rehab, and I am glad that it is going well. I really liked that article. I experienced a bout of ITBS mainly in the summer before my senior year of high school. I definitely related with the things the article said, and, for such a painful injury, it sure is awesome to read about how easily cured it is. I am glad mine didn't linger too long.
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