Day 5

No big change since yesterday, improving slowly and steadily. I've been more active today - I've climbed the three floors to my apartment three times today, and while it did hurt a little, it did not feel like a bad pain. Still not using the bad leg when descending stairs though. I'm starting to activate the quads a little when walking and climbing stairs.

I also climbed and walked on the arm and back rests of the sofa to check something around the window frame. It probably looked precarious but I felt quite stable. I was sparing the bad leg and it worked fine.

I feel like at least some of the tension on the knee when extending under load comes from the sutures. Looking forward to getting them removed next week.

Day 2

I had no pain this night, or at least none that would wake me up - guess the paracetamol did its thing well. There is less pain today, it is now more of a soreness. The swelling around the ankle looks about the same as yesterday.

I removed the outer bandage today, that was a big relief. The first layer or two over the knee were quite snug, they actually caused some light abrasions around the patella. That explains the pain there from the first night. Other than the marks from the bandage, which disappeared during the course of the day, the knee looks pretty good. There is visible localised swelling at the incision site when the knee is flexed, but no hematoma in sight. I took a paracetamol after removing the bandage to prevent swelling and inflammation now that the pressure is off.

The ridges in the middle are marks from the edge of the protective pad under the bandage. The redness to the left is a light abrasion; another one is just about visible to the right.

This right after removal of the bandage; most of the marks disappeared within an hour. The adhesive bandage won't be touched for a couple more days.

As soon as I removed the bandage, max knee flexion went up to 90 degrees (if done carefully, no load). At that point, internal pressure at the incision made it too uncomfortable to go further. Range of motion has kept improving throughout the rest of the day.

Day 1

Didn't sleep very well this night. I would get into an position that's uncomfortable to the left knee and the pain would wake me up. Some of the pain came distinctively from the patella region for some reason; it wasn't from somewhere inside the joint, but from the outer edges of the patella.

The pain is not too bad during the day. In total I've taken one aspirine (in the morning before picking up the prescribed medication), two paracetamol (one at the end of the day before going to bed) and one ibuprofen during the course of the day.

Knee flexion has improved since yesterday, I can do 40+ degrees from straight now. This is just passive flexion, no weight on the leg, no pressure on the knee. When not moving I'm keeping leg extended and elevated most of the time.

I'm able to walk slowly and carefully. Bearing weight is no problem, but the part where I need to bend the knee and bring the foot forward can be tricky. When stepping forward I can't really use the stabilising muscles around the knee because that puts strain on the IT band; instead I just lock out the leg and put weight on it completely straight and that seems to work fine at the speed that I'm going. I go up and down stairs using the right leg only to do the work. I've had two walks of 15-20 minutes to keep the leg moving and to stimulate circulation.

I've noticed some swelling in the ankle and foot in the evening. Can't tell if it was there before, I wasn't really looking. I'm guessing it's a light swelling that started in the knee area and then the fluid descended to the foot. It's not big or painful so I'm not really worried.

Prologue

Hello!

This is a blog where I will be presenting the progress of my recovery from the surgery that I had to fix the IT band issues in my left knee. I presume people reading this blog already know that the Iliotibial Band Syndrome is and probably have some experience with it, so I won't be going into the subject here.

At the time of my surgery, I've been able to find very few blog or forum posts from people who had similar surgery done with more details than "Had surgery X months/years ago. Ran a PB X months later." In fact, the only detailed account I know of is this one, though it describes a more complicated intervention than my own. (I've no affiliation with that blog, I found it through Google and the only parts of it I read are the ones related to the author's surgery and recovery.) I hope to make this blog a useful resource for anyone facing a similar surgical procedure for their ITBS.

I'm a recreational road cyclist, and my ITBS started while cycling, though an ill-advised run was probably a factor as well. This is a short history:

• The pain first started midway into a 130 km ride in February of 2015. The ride was unusually long for me at the time, but I was well used to rides of around 90 km, so having the pain start at 60 km was unexpected. The best guess was that it was caused by a combination of factors: first I made made my first attempt at running just a few days before the ride, where I ran far beyond my capabilities at the time; then, I went for a long ride before fully recovering from the run; finally, I had raised my saddle as an experiment right before the long ride.
• During the spring of 2015, I made some attempts of taking a break and then gradually getting back into riding, but pain would invariably come back after a while.
• During the summer I didn't ride at all, but I did experience some pain on easy hikes a couple of times.
• In September I finally found an orthopedist with some experience with ITBS. Under his orders I did some passive physiotherapy during the autumn including stretching, massage, ultrasound and ESWT (link), followed by a gradual return to cycling during the winter. I had gotten back to 90 km long rides with no pain until it returned again in February 2016.
• Had a couple of cortisone shots and did a round of self-guided hip and glute strengthening exercises during the spring of 2016 with no success.
• Finally had a surgical procedure done on the 18th of July 2016.

The procedure done on my knee is resection of the posterior portion of the IT band, also known as open surgical release. This type of surgery typically includes removal of a piece of the IT band where it presses against the lateral femoral epicondyle, but in my case just a straight, perpendicular cut was done form the rear edge and about halfway across the band. I asked about the option of an arthroscopic technique to remove some of the synovial tissue under the IT band, but my orthopedist opted for the more conventional approach after consultation with one of the doctors who originally developed the arthroscopic procedure.