stiff knee

Hi Andrea, mine does stiffen up after doing stretching exercises. Massaging the knee loosens it up. Try rubbing the leg using E45 cream or similar so you don't pull the skin. The whole area softens the more you massage.

Hi Andrea - I'm afraid there's more to come I'm 24 weeks still have a stiff knee and muscle/tendon /ligament pain above and below.

Everyone seems to be healing at different rates. Hopefully yours will improve soon.

When you consider they virtually cut off your leg and reattached it - is no wonder it complains!

I am six weeks post op right TKR and the stiffness responds best to movement and ice. I definitely prefer the stiffness to limping for two years. 

Yep still have the stiffness and I'm 11 weeks post op. I'm sure it's all to do with healing and also the more you exercise the more you are using injured muscles, tendons etc. I also use bio oil on my scar. Would you suggest using E45 cream to massage the while knee? Will buy some today and try it. 😉

A lot of the stiffness starts with lower back and hip muscles being weak and works its way on down the leg. If you are like most people who have gone through this, you walked with a limp favoring the bad leg which allowed the soft tissue to develops bad habits. You are now trying to so about 3 or 4 things at once: heal all the surgical damage, inside and out, strengthen the knee so it can support activities it isn't used to, return to a normal walking stride and pace and get your upper body upright again. When you excercise, do it slowly and with full extension. When you walk slow down, take full heal, ball of the foot then toe steps. Hurrying and not taking full advantage of the opportunity to correct old habits is really wasted effort. Most of us are in such a hurry to rehab we forget to do things correctly. After my original tkr my foot flew to the outside and I must have looked a little like a duck. When I had the revision I made sure I took the proper steps to walk straight. Where I'm from, no one uses crutches, a walker is the issued assistive device and it makes it much easier to do the proper step as you don't worry as much about balance an it isn't quite as tiring. I am now 8 weeks without a prosthesis trying to clear up a major staph infection and when I get my new knee installed in the next month, I will again take my time doing each excercise slowly and correctly. Doing them wrong is about as bad as not doing them at all. Again, make sure you are stretching everything from lower back to your feet. If you can get a professional massage with emphasis on lower back and legs, it will so you world's of good. If you can't do that, just give your leg as deep of axrub as possible

I think exercise is a good thing even though it may be painful to start it gets better the more you do.  I've got myself a JS Knee support which you can buy on line. before I had this I couldn't put my foot to the floor properly and trying to do the stairs was no mean feat. Now I can do all this and wear the suport all day and it gives a lot of relief. Look it up and see what you think.

One other thing, stay hydrated. Drink water like you are trying to put out an internal fire. Dehydrated soft tissue just won't stretch and stay pliable. Stay away from too much caffeine and carbonated drinks (alcohol included) as they pull fluids off quickly.