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TKR Aug 20 hard work.

well not using the recumbent bike for awhile .i did yesterdayI swelled up like a balloon. another step backwards. iam getting so depressed.
 
Hi, judgar. This recovery is a roller coaster, and you will have many ups and downs before you've fully recovered. I know it's frustrating, and gets us down, but it really does get better over time. You're almost at two months, and this next month will most likely see some noticeable improvements. Most people are feeling much better around three months post-op, although it really does take a full year, on average, to heal, and sometimes you'll see improvement after the first year. I understand your frustration, as do we all, and can only encourage you to continue to be patient, and on days like this, look back to where you were before your surgery, at a few days after, a week after and so on, and you will realize there is improvement, which will continue as time passes.

When something, like using a bike, causes problems, put it aside and revisit it in a couple weeks or so to see if your knee can tolerate it at that point. In the meantime, continue to do the things your knee tolerates well, and rest, ice and elevate as needed.
 
judgar said:
well not using the recumbent bike for awhile .i did yesterdayI swelled up like a balloon. another step backwards. iam getting so depressed.
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It is so easy to feel depressed and down during this recovery, and having swelling like that would sure trigger it for me, too. :console2: Ice, elevate, and rest, and you know it will un-swell! There will be plenty of time to ride your recumbent bike later on after you have healed a bit further.

Last night I was feeling down in the dumps too, because it has been 66 days since my TKR and I am STILL not sleeping normally yet. So I was feeling especially exhausted, tired, crabby, and beginning to wonder if this recovery will ever end. I felt selfish to even post about how I felt because I never had excruciating pain and really, I do enjoy the daily improvements. Still, lack of sleep may not sound like a big deal but for me it is no walk in the park.

I have plenty of pain pills left over and just one would put me right to sleep for the entire night, instead of my series of useless one hour naps. But really I do not want to depend on sleep medications and I especially do not want to drug myself to sleep like that when I am not feeling much of any pain. I don't drink but was thinking that gee, if I did, I could probably just drink a glass of wine and fall asleep. Oh well, this is no reason to take up drinking! :heehee: Luckily, much to my surprise last night I slept for 7 hours straight, in my bed!!! yay So today is a whole new day, and things are looking up.

It's the TKR emotional roller coaster, in action! :good-bad:

P.S.: +1 to everything lovestocookandsew said! We were writing our posts at the same time, and I didn't see hers until I posted.
 
Ok.. can someone tell me when will the swelling start going down. Mine is not.i ice I elevate it. No change. I measure it every night and every morning.what am I doing to cause this.i don’t feel like iam over doing it. Is the ones about my time 8 weeks is your swelling gone and comes back when your active? Mine has never left yet.
 
Every knee is different, and every recovery is different. The one thing they all have in common is that it takes a lot of patience to get through every recovery. While we can't give you an exact time frame for your swelling to go down and/or be gone, we can tell you that with time and patience you will see improvement. In the meantime, allow your knee the time it needs to recover, and ice and elevate as you can. I also suggest you stop measuring it since we all know a watched pot never boils, and constant measuring isn't going to show improvement by the hour. Instead, I suggest you look at it today, and in a month or two, look back to today and measure all your progress; not in inches, but in your ability to do more and more.
 
judgar said:
Ok.. can someone tell me when will the swelling start going down. Mine is not.i ice I elevate it. No change. I measure it every night and every morning.what am I doing to cause this.i don’t feel like iam over doing it. Is the ones about my time 8 weeks is your swelling gone and comes back when your active? Mine has never left yet.
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Your swelling could go down at any time! Mine went down a couple of weeks ago, I think. All the swelling is not gone yet, but really most of it is gone. Activity still makes it swell temporarily, until after I ice for a while. Like lovestocookandsew said in her post, each knee is different.
 
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judgar said:
Ok.. can someone tell me when will the swelling start going down.
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The swelling on my right leg didn't really reduce very much for the first 4 months. And after that, if I stood for long periods of time, it would swell enough I came home to elevate and ice. Right now, my newest knee is swollen less than my right one at the same time after surgery.

I know it sounds both repetitive and not helpful, but each knee is different. The swelling will reduce, but it will do so on its own schedule.
 
judgar said:
I measure it every night and every morning
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I never once measured my swelling. It never even occurred to me to do that. I think you are causing yourself a lot of stress by all this measuring.

judgar said:
don’t feel like iam over doing it.
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Maybe your knee thinks you are overdoing it. What does a normal day look like for you, activity-wise?

Even if you aren’t overdoing it, the swelling will settle down over time. I still had plenty of swelling at 8 weeks.
 
Has anyone used kinesiology tape to help swelling. And if so did it help?
 
I used kinesiology tape and it did help with swelling. I had tape on both the front of my leg and the back of my knee. My therapist also taught me how to do lymphatic massage which is connected to what happens with the tape.
 
How long did you leave the tape on? I did this for my other knee but don’t remember how long.
 
I kept it on for about a week by which time it was pulling away in lots of places. I then redid it for a 2nd week. My therapist created strips that she cut in tendrils at one end. The tendrils were splayed around my knee and toward my lower leg. The other end of each stip w/tendrils was a solid piece that was affixed on my thigh a few incj=heds above my knee. The point was to have the tendrils help move fluid up toward the "collector" ends closer to your lymph nodes in the groin area. I would have provided a picture, but I've upgraded my operating system and I'm having problems accessing my photos. :banghead:
 
Thank you. That makes sense to have it high. I wouldn’t have thought of that.
 
This is my 10th week. I think it has been my worst week.new pain.the tightness is awful. I feel so down. It just seems like every time I go somewhere I have to come home and ice and elevate the knee for the rest of the day.This is so depressing.
 
Sorry you are struggling. But 10 weeks into a process that can take one year or more is a very short space of time. Most of our members ice after an active time.

What other activities are you doing? Any exercising or PT?
 
Can anyone tell me about swelling. How long does it usually last. I know your going to say it is different for everyone. There has to be a period where it start to go down. I would like to know when some of you had no swelling at all anymore. I need this toon when I can look forward to this, iam 11 weeks and still quite swollen.
 
You’re right that everyone is different. All of our knees were at different degrees of disrepair prior to our TKRs. The swelling should slowly be going down as long as you are icing and elevating and not doing too much with your new knee. Walking is fine. If you notice your swelling increases then you may have been doing too much. Stop the activity and wait a couple of days before you try it again. Do you have an appointment with your OS soon? If you believe the swelling hasn’t been slowly going down you may want to check with your OS.
 
Iam having terrible pain in my thigh on the side. Has anyone else had this. I just had an xray last week for my checkup, everything was fine. All of a sudden I have this. So just wondering if this is part of the healing
 
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