Day 26 Post-Op

Before Surgery

Almost 4 Weeks

My leg, knee, and foot are still swollen, but I can really tell a difference in how straight my right leg is compared to the left. They are both still ugly. :-)

Three Weeks, Five Days Out

Ah! sweet mystery of life, at last I've found thee;

Ah! I know at last the secret of it all;

All the longing, striving, seeking, waiting, yearning,

The burning hopes, the joys and idle tears that fall!

~

I took a hot bath.

Post-Op Day 20

I saw my surgeon today for my first post-op visit. Tomorrow will be 3 weeks. He is very pleased with my progress. We are scheduling surgery on my other knee in 6 weeks.

The staples were removed by home health on day 13. We also stopped the coumadin that day. I've been walking with and without the cane lately. I use ice once a day now, in the evening. By then, I'm usually a bit sore. I am still doing my exercises, and home health physical therapy comes three times a week. I forgot to ask about going to out patient PT. I guess the therapist can call and get the orders. I am doing 3 sets now, with my personal goal of working up to 4 sets.

I have an abdominal infection that I am keeping my eye on. I finally went to my PCP today, and he referred me to the surgeon who did my original hernia repair 3 years ago. I don't want this little thing to turn into a big thing, especially now that I have this foreign stuff in my leg.

I drove home from the doctor's. I'm free again! Not bad for less than 3 weeks out, eh?

Pictures

Still swollen, but my surgical leg is straighter.

________________________

Staples

Post-Op Day 10, Continued

I am walking with a cane now and doing some new exercises. Remember my brag about not using ice? Scratch that. I'm back on the ice packs and ice machine. In fact, The Groom is at the store buying ice right now.

I am using the leg more, and using the muscles in a different way. Ouch. But it is progress, right? Bruce measured my knee angle and today it was ...drumroll, please...
100 degrees! ^happy dance*

I asked him to measure my "good" leg while sitting, and he said it was about 115 degrees when I bent it as far as I could. I will be very happy if I can get the right knee to bend that much. That would get me in and out of the car and the bath. What more does a gal need?

Oh, and I think Bruce was drinking this morning. Ick.

I get the staples out on Monday. I should probably get a picture before that. Whoever stapled me managed to get a fairly straight line. I always find that amazing for some reason. I doubt my surgeon did it. Those guys usually scoot out of the OR as soon as they are done and let others finish things up.

Post-Op Day 10

*sigh* I am not a patient woman, and this recovery/rehab takes time.

The pain still isn't bad. In fact, most of the time the knee hurts less than it did before the surgery. I do have my moments, though, and that is when the drugs come in handy. I hope my liver holds out.

I am not using ice. The morning of my 7th post-op day I woke up with a lot less swelling in my knee. I had been using the cooling machine they sent home with me, and using more ice than the refrigerator could produce. The Groom bought 3 bags of ice, and that lasted 3 or 4 days with the machine. When we ran out of extra ice, I started doing without it. I used a regular ice pack a few times, but I haven't done that for 2 or 3 days.

I took a shower yesterday. Ah, sweeeeet. I was beginnig to feel a bit crusty around the edges. You can only do so much in a sink. I used a shower chair, and it was fine.

Physical therapy is (probably) going to switch me over from the walker to a cane today and have me walk outside a bit. It's supposed to rain. Now, I've been hobbling around on my own when the walker won't fit well in places and I've done fine. The first few days I did this, I paid for it with pain the next day. After a few days, it was better. The PT guy, Bruce, said there is no way I can hurt the prosthesis unless I fall, so I'm taking him at his word. Better said, I want to walk without assistance sometimes, so I do.

The exercises are one big bore. And they hurt. But I do them. Mostly I do them. The bend in my knee was at 93 degrees the last 2 times Bruce measured -- the first time I didn't see an increase from one measurement to the next. I feel like I am taking a test, and I want to do well. I also want to be able to drive, which is going to be hard to do if I can't bend my knee enough to even get into the driver's seat. So I do the exercises. Mostly.

Not much else to say. So far, this has been fairly easy. Certainly easier than having rotator cuff repair surgery. Now THAT was a rough recovery.

Six Days Post-Op

It seems as if I am in an every-other-day pattern with the pain, just like I was with my shoulder/arm. Overdo it, hurt, rest, overdo it. The pain still isn't really bad, more of a deep muscle ache above the knee, especially. My leg is still getting used to walking straight intead of crooked. Of course, having bones sawed off and metall hammered into the bone ends probably doesn't make for a good feeling, either.

I think I am sleeping a lot. They told us all at the hospital to sleep when we are sleepy, so I'm all over that. I had two 2-hour naps yeaterday and then slept a couple of 3-hour stretches on the couch last night. I never made it back into the bedroom. The couch is comfy. I prop my lep up on folded blankets and pillows. I've been using frozen gel packs for cooling.

I'm still very swollen from just above my ankle to above my knee, even when I first get up. After dangling my leg for awhile, it gets worse, of course. The bruising is ugly. The warfarin can be blamed for that. I still have 6 large bruises on my arms from them trying to start an IV and draw blood. They are just starting to fade. They kept getting darker for 3 days after they did all the poking. I look like the "old people" I used to take care of who had bad bruises. Ick.

Physical therapy will be here soon. My home health nurse is coming today to draw blood for INR/PT to see if my warfarin dose is doing the job. It will be the same nurse I've had off and on for the past 3 years with various surgeries. She is good, and she remembers things. She has watched me lose weight -a lot of it- and has watched the dog gain. She always talks to the love birds and asks about things I've mentioned in the past, things I've forgotten about.

Non-knee stuff...

I got some sun over the weekend. It was nice sitting on the patio with The Groom. He carted my walker down the stairs for me. We saw a little white flutterby two days in a row, which reminded us of the hummingbird we saw last year. He put the hummingbird feeders out on plant hooks and filled them with his home brew. We'll be in competition with the neighbors, who put their feeders out last week.

Birds are building nests in neighboring trees and under the hangy-down-things on both sides of our garage just under the roof. I'm sure there is a name for that. The grass is growing, and some plants are starting to shoot up. I can see little leaves on the tops of the radishes I planted several weeks ago. I hope to be able to putz around in the gardens in a few weeks. I have things growing inside that need to be put into the gardens outside.

Four Days Post-Op

Ouch.

Yesterday was good. I was getting around the house like gangbusters. Physical therapy guy came over and we did exercises. I was all over the house, doing little things here and there.

Then today happened. Ouch. I'm thinking I overdid it yesterday. I know I did. My body knows I did. I need adult supervision...

I am taking it very easy today.

Two Days Post-op

I am home. I got sprung early because I am doing so well. This isn't bad at all. I've certainly had much more painful surgeries in the past year. I have an electric ice pack thingy with a knee wrap to use that feels really good. I'm taking Vicodin 5/500, which isn't very strong. If I could soak in a hot bath, I'd be in heaven.

Home health will come twice a week to draw INR/PT times because I am on coumadin. Physical therapy will come starting tomorrow to torture me. :-) I did very well with PT today at the hospital, which is why I got to come home early. I did the stairs just fine, and I'm hardly using the walker for weight bearing. I am still getting used to walking on a straight leg. It's hard to see how much straighter it is because it is swollen quite a bit. Once it looks more normal, I'll have pictures taken.

It is good to be home with The Groom, the dog, the cat, the fish, and the love birds. I'm having a monster taco for dinner. (Yes, hospital food is still nasty, so I'm hungry.)

Day of Surgery

Here I go. I have to be at the hospital at 5:00 a.m. Not much sleep last night. Both knees are aching something awful. It will be interesting to compare the pain before and after surgery.

Everything went well. Apparently, according to the surgeon as he told The Groom, my leg was very crooked. He put me in a very stiff brace for 24 hours in order to stretch the muscles into the correct positions. Owie. The surgical site doesn't hurt much, but the muscles above and below are very tender. The toradol they have been giving me works woderfully well. Much better even than morphine, which is a bit surprising to me because toradol is not a narcotic.

The big broughaha with me after surgery was that I was totally zonked. They thought at first it was the pain meds, but they finally figured out it was the Benadryl they gave me to keep me from being nauseated. I wouldn't wake up in recovery. The Groom was a bit kerfuffled about it all, but I eventually woke up and everything was fine.