A thigh strain or quadriceps strain is a tear in one of the quadriceps muscles at the front of the thigh. It can range from a mild discomfort to a full blown tear of most of the muscle resulting in severe pain and inability to walk.
The breakage of the stitches starts within 2 weeks of the stitching but if you want the complete stitches to disappear then the process of hydrolysis or the enzymes in our body do that in a period of 60 days and therefore it approximately takes up to 2 months for the stitches to get dissolved.
Turns out that a few of the stitches hadn't dissolved yet and were irritating my incision site. That is what was causing the spotting. She took them out, and said the spotting should be gone by a week or so. So I guess it is not unusual to have them in there still at 5 weeks or even later.