I had my 1st physical therapy appointment today, meeting with Bruce up in Chapel Hill. Bruce is who I’ve worked with the past year or so, working on patella tracking (patella stretches, VMO strengthening, ITB stretches, etc.) so he knows my full history.

The 1st thing we did was take some measurements of both legs. “bopd” is the base of the patella.

So what this shows is that my Right thigh is significantly smaller than my left, and this stems from the past year with the injury, I’ve significantly used my left leg more, from everything to sitting down and standing up, hiking, steps, etc. We’ll need to work on this as the knee heals up and allows me to.

We also took some measurements. My R knee flexed at 100 degrees, while the L knee did 140.

Bruce then did a few minutes of patella mobilization, both medially and anteriorly.

I then did 5 minutes on the stationary bike with no resistance, and 5 minutes of treadmill with 0 incline, walking at about 3.0 mph.

We then did 20 minutes of elctrostim and ice simultaneously, mostly to help reduce swelling. In the future, we’ll use electrostim to assist in strengthening the R thigh.

For now, Bruce wants me to do the following:

• Continue to ice knee several times a day. To this end I got a “bodyice” by dynatronics from him, as it seemed this was a better product than what I was using at home — a cheap gel pack and/or crushed ice.
• Walk on treadmill, no incline, 5 minutes, twice a day.
• Ride stationary bike, no resistence, 5 minutes, twice a day. I’ll need to put together my trainer and put a slick wheel.
• 30 x 5 sec hold quad strengtheners
• 30 x 5 sec hold of hamstring strengtheners
• 10 x 5 sec hold of knee to chest stretches (or as far as mine will go!)
• 7 minutes of medial patella glides
• 5 minutes of inferior patella glides