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TKR Grandma Chris gets a new knee!

Not a stellar night last night but I got a good few hours of sleep. I'm looking forward to feeling stronger and more capable soon, I hope! I have been using a walker and sometimes in the house just nothing. I don't do that much, I need to grow confidence in my new knee. Up to now there has been no pain in my knee when I step out without support but this morning I took a couple of steps without my walker and felt a little pain and weakness in my new knee. Huh? I am icing and elevating - what else is new?!? Hopefully that was just a little aberration!
 
grandma chris said:
Up to now there has been no pain in my knee when I step out without support but this morning I took a couple of steps without my walker and felt a little pain and weakness in my new knee. Huh? I am icing and elevating - what else is new?!? Hopefully that was just a little aberration!
Click to expand...
That was your knee telling you it isn't yet ready for you walking without using the walker. Your knee is wounded and it needs time to recover and regain its strength.
Until it gets stronger, keep using the walker. You don't want to risk a fall.
 
Omg! I am quite excited! I've had a good day, productive with a couple of good naps. Then tonight as I was getting ready to turn in I stood at the kitchen counter and tried to bend my knee. To my great satisfaction and encouragement I was able to bend quite a lot more than I had been, with NO pain! That is so encouraging as up until now there has been very little improvement in my ROM. The bonesmart method works. Yay!!
 
Yay, grandma chris! What good news!
 
I had a totally exhausted day today. Had a reasonable sleep, about five hours but just kept nodding off all day. Now I am having a little crisis of confidence. My knee feels fine, no unreasonable pain, I'm mostly running at about 1 or 2, which is not bad for coming up to four weeks. I am mostly concerned about my ROM and the fact that it has not significantly improved over the four weeks. I'm sure I'm nowhere near 90 degrees and I'm worried that maybe not doing a lot of physio is the wrong thing. Right now I think I need to sleep and starting tomorrow I am going to ramp up walking. I've been avoiding going out because of the 22 stairs up to our place and also because it's cold out. I will have to suck it up and just do it. My house is just too small. I'm also thinking I need to change up my meds. Currently I am taking one T3 every four hours and one 400mg ibuprofen every four hours, staggering them so I take something every couple of hours. I often go longer between doses as I forget our don't feel the need. The T3s have 300 mg of Tylenol in each tab and I calculate I could add one 500 mg Tylenol instead of the ibuprofen. Then I could resume taking celebrex for all the other inflammation in my body. Not sure any of that makes sense, I'm going to bed! Goodnight all
 
One of our members, Bertschb, kept a record of his ROM process. He agreed for us to post it for those of you that are afraid you're stuck. The key is to have patience! Bertschb says:

“I'm 12 months out from my surgery and have some advice based on my experience:
1- Stop going to PT (all it will do is make your knee swell and reduce ROM)
2- Don't worry about your ROM
3- Be patient - VERY patient!!!

Here is my ROM history (more or less):

1 month - 60 degrees
2 months - 80 degrees
3 months - 85 degrees
4 months - 90 degrees
5 months - 90 degrees
6 months - 110 degrees
7 months - 120 degrees
8 months - 125 degrees
9 months - 130 degrees
10 months - 135 degrees
11 months - 140 degrees
12 months - 140 degrees

I spent waaaaay too much time worrying about ROM. I thought I'd be riding my bike a couple months after surgery but it took SIX months! Looking back on my surgery, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have wasted my time with PT and I wouldn't have worried about ROM.”
 
Is you can get out and walk, that's the best way to improve your ROM, both bend and extension. Don't try and do all those steps foot over foot, though! That would be asking for trouble for your knee!
 
@sistersinhim hahaha! I tried foot over foot for one step going down last week. Screaming agony! I will not be making that mistake any time soon. I was lucky I didn't pitch down the stairs head first! Lol
 
Crisis of confidence is a great description of parts of this recovery. You probably have swelling at this point that's keeping you from getting rom. Or maybe you have 90 and don't realize it.
We all have doubts at some point. Just concentrate on ice, elevating and resting. 4 weeks is early days. It seems like a long time, but it is very early days.
 
Excellent 6.5 hour sleep last night! Yay! This was after physio yesterday. I'm a little conflicted about physio as you've probably figured out. My physiotherapist is not in any way trying to make me do anything I don't want to do. So yesterday I did some time on the bike, rocking at zero resistance. Other than that some very gentle squats at a bar - really just seeing how far I could get my knee bent before any pain. He measured me before I left and I have not improved really, from 73 to 75. He does not seem worried at this point but I've made it very clear that I'm skittish! I've agreed to another appointment on Thursday. As to how I felt afterwards, I was definitely feeling the exertion, so that my pain level was at 3 or 4 during the evening. I rested, elevated, and iced and today seems much better. I know that I do not on any way subscribe to no pain no gain, but maybe just a little discomfort? I will continue ADLs today, maybe a little walk outside. I'm lucky that I live right behind a strip mall, extremely walkable! Within a 500 meter walk there is a liquor store, a chocolate shop, flowers, meats and deli, veggie store, fish monger, bakery, and Starbucks! So I cannot complain about nowhere to walk to!! Have a great day all
 
Walking is the best thing to rehab that knee of yours. You're blessed to have an area so close to you!
 
One hundred and four days before we fly to the UK and Gran Canaria for a beautiful month in the sun. We've had our airplane tickets for some time but tonight we changed our seats to bulkhead ones. It's a little more expensive but I can't imagine a ten hour flight in an economy seat. It's a very long flight...
 
I think that's a very smart switch you made! It'll be worth every extra penny that it costs!
 
I feel like I've turned some kind of corner. I slept for six hours straight last night and woke refreshed and raring to go. Besides my usual little chores of emptying the dishwasher, tidying my nest, etc I felt the need to deep clean the washrooms today. I did and was quite ready for a nice nap after This afternoon I had physio and it went really well. My physiotherapist is quite happy to let me do my thing and so I used the bike with zero resistance and I walked the perimeter. My apartment is quite small and I've mentioned the stairs and difficulty walking outside at this time. Well, walking the perimeter at physio was perfect and I got a great walk. Later when I was talking to Mitch I mentioned going into the pool and the danger of overdoing it in the water. This lovely man who has been so good with me said, "yes but if you overdo it in the water you won't actually hurt yourself, you'll just be swollen for a couple of days". Gah! I don't want to wish a knee replacement on anyone but really!!
 
He may be better than some, but if he says things like that, he’s not really one of the good guys.
 
Most of the health care professionals I've dealt with don't seem terribly concerned with pain - with the exception of the wonderful nurses in the surgical wards. They are the front line who see up close what pain does to us. Most of the doctors I've dealt with and now physiotherapists too seem to think that pain is just part of the experience. It's not dangerous, it doesn't mean your replacement will fail or that you will die, therefore it just doesn't have the import that those things do. I don't think any of these people set out to hurt us, I believe they genuinely have our best interests at heart - they just have not experienced that pain personally. I'd be interested to know how attitudes change when these professionals end up needing joint replacement surgery. Experience is a great teacher and sadly, by the time they experience the surgery they've already treated hundreds or thousands of people in what seems to us to be an uncaring way. Pretty deep for this time of night!
 
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