Swimming Breaststroke After Lateral Release

My 17 year old daughter had surgery in mid-February to remove plica and during surgery her doctor preformed a lateral release to her left knee (no right knee pain). She is a 10 year competitive swimmer and had an extremely painful recovery but returned to the water in 6 weeks.

Initially, she was barely able to swim for only about 30 minutes daily and has now built up to about 2 hours a day. At first, she was only swimming freestyle and backstroke. She has since added the butterfly and in June her surgeon told her she could try adding in a little breaststroke but to quit if pain ensued.

She is anxious to resume breaststroke training as she is hoping to be a college recruit and her events are the breaststroke and IM. She finds currently it is more painful to do a slow breaststroke than a fast race-paced one.

She is now 5 months postop---is this common and what is the general prognosis for a swimmer after this surgery???

I think she is doing remarkable but she is frustrated still by knee fatigue. She has been done with PT for months but still does leg raises with ankle weights 3 times per week , 3 sets of ten per leg. She is up to 7 lbs on each ankle. Is there anything else you recommend??

Thanks!!!
Vanessa

p.s. She had a great surgeon, Lyle Micheli at Children's in Boston