CG'sknees
member
First, thanks to the board. Along with all of you, I was busy perusing the web prior to my RTKA, and was horrified by most of the boards I read, until I stumbled upon this one. It's truly the most realistic and hopeful one that I came across.
My backstory: I'm 57, have been overweight almost my entire life, and had a mother with arthritis. I made it to age 52 with diagnosis of "mild arthritis" in my knees, and assumed that losing weight would help. I lost about 80 lbs, but various circumstances brought emotional eating and weight re-gain of about 25 lbs. On a trip with hubby to San Francisco, after a couple of months of trying my damnest to get back on track to lose last remaining pounds by going to gym workouts, I made the mistake of thinking I could climb up some funky steps up the side of Telegraph Hill (attempting to get to Coit Tower). There were about 380 steps total. I thought I wrenched my knee near the top of the climb, and ended up with a very sore knee for a few weeks. Although people encouraged me to got to the doc, I refused, assumed I just needed some time, and climbed more steps back at home in LA. WHAT A MISTAKE!! I ended up in urgent care with diagnosis of a torn meniscus in right knee. After reviewing the x-rays of my knees, the PA in attendance exclaimed that I had the knees of a 96 year-old. Gee,thanks guy.
I went to my PCP, who referred me to an OS, who recommended arthroscopic surgery. I was hesitant to do it, since I had looked on-line and had heard that for overweight middle-aged woman this wasn't the best idea. But encouraged by both the PCP and OS, I went ahead with scope in Dec 07. Yes, another mistake. Though I went through months of PT, and was doing my exercises daily, I was not able to get past the pain and recovery that I had attained by the third week after surgery. At a visit to the OS during the summer, I asked about hylaronic acid (sp?) injections. He thought it might be a good idea, could help, but I might be on the road to joint replacement. And oh, BTW, he didn't do those. What a jerk he was! Truly if I had known he was such a limited OS, I would have asked for another referral, etc. I did the shots, to get through a summer trip to Yosemite, but broke down at my PCP's office. She responded by suggesting that I go (finally!!) to the "gold-standard" knee guy in LA; whatever he said I needed would be the gospel truth.
Well, finally, I found someone who had the right idea about my knees, and the treatment I had received so far. He said point blank that an arthritic knee should never have arthro surgery, since it just exacerbates the condition. He would have initially suggested that I just lose weight and heal as best I could until I was ready to contemplate TKA. Well by the time I got to OS-2 I had struggled through 11 months of disability and I was READY!
I had my surgery on Dec 21 (just 4 weeks and one day ago), and I'm so happy I did this. Yes, it hurts, yes, there is still a lot of work to do, but I can tell that this surgery will return me to the life I had before. I could walk for miles before, and ride my bike all around, etc. etc. Now, I was still able to bike up until this surgery, but I didn't push going as far as I could before (about 20 miles in a day sometimes). I hope that by summer I'm able to do that again!
As you can tell, I'm certainly not an athlete, and don't intend to ski or run marathons etc. But to be able to live a healthy and relatively active life as I used to is my goal.
Now, about my pain meds. I was at OS-2 at three weeks for staple removal, and forgot to ask the doc about renewing my Vicodin-ES prescription. I asked the PA on my way out and she said "Oh, you should be weaning off those by now". WHAT???!!!! I hadn't gotten a full night sleep since the second week or so, and that was on the pain meds. Don't give me just Tylenol!
Thankfully I had some lesser strength Vicodin leftover from the arthro surgery last year. I took some of those, along with the Tylenol, for several days. Then just called up the pharmacy and asked for refill on the Vicodin-ES. They had to call the doc, but did get the refill.
My question/s: Is there some strategy, procedure, whatever, to "weaning" off the V? I'm doing pretty well right now with 3 doses of 5/500 V, plus 2 doses of Tylenol ES, doing this daily for past few days. Once the 5/500 are gone I will attempt to replace the Vicodin doses with 1/2 of the 7.5/750 pills. Should I drop down to 2 maybe at some point, then one? I don't want to have some major freak-out once I stop (I think I've been watching too much Celebrity Rehab...).
Well, that's my story. Hope you are all doing well. I starting my outpatient PT next week, after having in-home PT for last few weeks. I'm doing stationery bike also, doing 20 minutes daily. And of course the boring other exercises...
Sorry if I've babbled on too long.