TKR Looking for reassurance - or company for my misery...

[soSuesew]

Nmscienceteacher, you're certainly right about thinking about exercise in a different way. I'm working on some attitude adjustment at the moment and am feeling more positive about it.

Very conscious that this sounds like excuses, but it's not easy to find a support system in a tiny village at the bottom of a valley in rural northern France. No gym within 30 miles and what there is, is aimed at body-toning rather than theraputic exercise. Don't know anyone else with similar surgery who isn't apprehensive of having to talk to the 'the English woman', although I have reasonable French. Culturally, French people approach medical care and interventions in a very different way, and don't expect to play an active role in their treatment and healing. I get a lot of quizical looks at many of my suggestions and questions!

So self-motivation is the key and sometimes, I'm not so good at it...

Sue

 

[nmscienceteacher]

Even living stateside with a gym five min from my house it is hard...and I am REALLY GOOD at finding ways to not exercise. Find a buddy online...I am sure many of the bone smarties would jump in to help. Also there is an exercise thread in the social room...which I haven't used myself...hmmmm...anyway I would be glad to email or message back and forth with you. I am currently trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I have to have a hip replacement on the opposite side as the knee replacement on June 5th...and I am afraid I won't be ready. I also resent losing pretty much my whole summer break (I'll get about ten days right after school lets out) and I have to recover in nine weeks and be ready to start teaching again. I am figuring it is about time to quit whining and start doing!

 

[soSuesew]

Just went for a walk around the village...wouldn't want to overstate it...but almost enjoyed it. Freezing cold though - think the snow must be on it's way.

What animal doesn't have knees? Next time, I'm coming back as one of them!

Sue

 

[soSuesew]

Nmscienceteacher, I understand that hip replacement is easier to recover from (not that I want to decry the experience of our hippie friends on this forum and we've all seen how good I am at internet research...) so, hopefully, the summer won't feel like a complete washout.

Did you say that you teach middle school - what age range is that?

Sue

 

[nmscienceteacher]

I teach 6th grade earth science. Middle school is when the subjects are taught by different teachers. My students are 11 and 12. It is an age I love and have taught for the past 20+ years. In my area middle school is grades 6, 7, and 8.
Congratulations on taking a walk...not much fun in the extreme cold. I am glad you enjoyed it. Now that you have done it once the second time will be easier!
I have had my right hip replaced already...but that time I had 12 weeks to recover. This time I have 14 days before surgery after we end school and not quite 9 weeks before I report back and have to set up my classroom...the shorter time frame had me worried. I'll deal with it. I had hoped to delay the hip a few years but when we corrected the collapse in the knee it evidently changed the geometry enough so the hip that hadn't hurt before started causing problems. As they say, this too shall pass!
I finally got enough energy yesterday to put away the pile of Christmas stuff that had been wallowing in the basement since January...it felt like a minor triumph and also made me go up and down the stairs 4 or5 times. That is considerably more times than normal so it was a good workout for my legs.

 

[soSuesew]

Back from the GP's and heard pretty much what I hoped: recovery is slow but not a cause for concern, he believes I am only half way through what will be a protracted recovery process for me, no need - in his opinion - to see the OS before the scheduled appointment in June and he is very willing to prescribe an additional 15 sessions of physio to help motivate me. The physio is covered by the national medical system amd won't cost me anything (other than what I've paid in taxes, of course!) So I've taken the prescription and will bite the bullet and phone Isabelle, Madame La Torture.

The contrast in my experience and that of some of our US friends is marked (and please, I'm not saying either is right or wrong, just commenting on the difference). He wasn't the slightest bit interested in a ROM number but was very keen to establish what my goals were. He emphasised that the physio, if I decided to do it, shouldn't hurt and was proprioceptive. I had to look that up - from Latin proprius, meaning "one's own", "individual" and perception, it's the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement.

So, feeling pretty good about it (there's always a tiny little burr at the back of one's mind that wonders if all is well or if this is as good as it gets) although slightly apprehensive of physio again. It makes sense to go back to Isabelle as she's very local and I like her a lot but we did have a rocky time when I had to ask her not to force my knee and hurt me. But she did buy into it, so I think I will go back to her in the first instance - I can always change if if I feel it's wrong.

I will *not* be going for a walk today (how quickly resolutions are broken) as it is snowing and very windy.

Sue in white and windy Aix en Issart

 

[nmscienceteacher]

Sounds like a good to cozy up to a fire! Keep us posted on how the physio goes. I see my trainer at the gym tomorrow...the challenge is to keep the workout moderate enough so I am not in agony the day after. It is sunny and fairly warm here in New Mexico today. My bulbs are popping up and I noticed a crocus in the bed by the door so spring is on its way! Have a great day.

 

[soSuesew]

Have a great day.

I giggled at this - I'm just getting ready for bed. I think we have an eight hour time difference.

Sue

 

[soSuesew]

I often post on my recovery thread when I am *really* fed-up with my progress. And there's no getting away from the fact that I am not having a speedy recovery. OK, speedy if measured against glaciers melting but, still...

However, I am sitting my way through a three hour delay at the Eurotunnel terminal waiting to get my shuttle train back to France from the UK. Needing to distract myself from the thousands of teenagers milling around, I was thinking of the last time I did a two day teaching trip, three months ago. I struggled to walk a distance, spent the evening with the contents of the hotel ice machine wrapped round my knee and was just exhausted the whole time with pain and effort. No problem walking this time (although slow-ish), enjoyed the two days, did a little retail therapy. Not perfect but a lot better than before.

So, a small 'woo hoo' for me.

Why thousands of teenagers? They are on their way to a European-wide university sports thing. Their buses also have a three hour delay. Every single boy is showing off to every single girl and they are NOISY. And I am a grumpy old woman.

Sue, not in France but marooned in England.

 

[bottomshollow]

So nice, Sue, that you could walk without pain and feel good enough to do some shopping. So things are getting better, even if slowly. Sorry about that 3 hour delay and all those teenagers. When you look at them through older eyes, it's hard to think that once this is how we looked to an older generation .

Take care and keep us posted. We care.

 

[kneeper]

Just catching up with your thread. I'm glad you have a plan now. I know I had to work on hamstring stretching --tight muscles seemed to hold back my bend a bit.

 

[soSuesew]

Kneeper, as with most of my plans, I'm not reaching 100 per cent success but definitely doing better with the daily exercise effort. But both the masseuse and the physio have said that the problem is not so much with my knee but with my head. Because I'm scared of pain/posssibility of pain, of damaging what was the good knee but on the way to becoming the bad knee, I'm protecting both knees and that doesn't make for good progress as I hold back.

I do have to hold on to the knowledge that, the day after my knee failed, I had gone from a busy person with the customary middle-age aches and pains to someone who needed two crutches to get around, couldn't really move my knee at at all, could barely drive and was almost housebound. So am I better off than that? Of course. I'd just like to to knock the final 15 per cent on the head and be back to normal (or whatever passes for that in this household). My general practioner says younger TKR patients are worse because their expectations are higher. Don't know if I count as younger at 57....

Sue, back in France after escaping the Eurotunnel turmoil last night

 

[soSuesew]

Sorry about that 3 hour delay and all those teenagers. When you look at them through older eyes, it's hard to think that once this is how we looked to an older generation .

Yes, bottomshollow, that's what I kept telling myself last night! i did become a little more tolerant but thought, at one stage, if that lot go through their dance routine one more time, I won't be held responsible for the consequences. There was one particulary noisy lad who was driving everyone crazy until a passerby tapped him on the shoulder when passing and said, 'Be quiet, my child.' He looked so startled but he did shut up!

The trouble is, after decades of living and working in London, I've spent the last 10 years living in a tiny village at the bottom of a valley in rural France. I've lost my ability to deal with traffic, lots of people and noise. My fault, not theirs...

Sue

 

[1ELISEA]

Getting caught up on your thread. I picture this beautiful small town in France and a slow idyllic way of life.

Some of your frustrations I understand. Having a TKR about nine months ago, I've been nursing a partially torn ligament on the ankle of my other foot. That means that it's been constantly wrapped, or booted (i.e. walking cast) for over two months with orders to be very careful and to hope that it heals well. It also means slowing my knee recovery to a crawl. And then add to it I'm just getting over bronchial pneumonia which had me sicker than I've been for ages; even a little exertion would send me into a cascade of coughing.

While recovering from both, I have managed to do flexibility and strengthening stretches lying on my bed, clam shells, leg lifts, anything that didn't cause me to bend my ankle or exert myself. And I too, have wondered about my ROM, building the strength back up, flexibility, it's a never ending battle right now.

But I was there once and will get there again, and you will get there too. Take it in small bits; If you hate exercise, do a minute of clam shells once an hour. If you take stairs one at a time, take the first one with the opposite foot several times up and down before proceeding up. Anything to add to the routine.

Hope that your weather warms soon and spring arrives. It does seem to be a bit persnickety this year, kind of like our TKR's.

 

[soSuesew]

Getting caught up on your thread. I picture this beautiful small town in France and a slow idyllic way of life.

Just a normal working village, Elisea, so farms, little houses, some bigger houses, a church, a small school...280 people getting by. But our local town, five miles away, Montreuil-sur-Mer, is beautiful with ramparts and very old buildings.

It is a different way of life, although not always slow or idyllic (especially when tractors are thundering past in the early hours of the morning, in a hurry to get a crop in before bad weather!). But it's about as big a contrast as you could think of to living in the London suburbs and working in London! And values are very different. It's been a challenge settling in here and we will never be 'locals'. But we've been here 10 years and it is home - and we have good French friends and are widely accepted.

Hope you are feeling better and getting over your additional complications. It's a hard enough recovery process without getting clobbered by other things!

Your suggestion of small bursts of exercise is a good one - and I mean to do it except I get caught up in other things and forget! It's good that I am doing other things but they don't necessarily give me the right sort of exercise.

Still very cold at night but the days are getting bright and warmer (although not exactly basking temps.). I am keen to get out into the garden as it got completely neglected last year.

Sue in sunny Aix

 

[soSuesew]

For the first three months I had physio, the exercise bike sat in the corner of the physio's office and mocked me - I just could not do a complete forward revolution. The operated knee would go so far and just stick. Fast forward three months to yesterday afternoon and I'm back at physio (boo) trying to get some more movement and build up muscle strength. Got on the bike, which has become my 'bête noire' and...I can do it! Did ten minutes, admittedly with not much resistance or speed, but...ten minutes!

EAT MY DUST, BIKE!

Sue in sunny, almost-Spring-like Aix en Issart.

 

[ElanorG]

Sue, it is all downhill from here! The bike is your friend! Get out the old iPod and listen to some music and ride away!

 

[soSuesew]

Well, I'm an infrequent visitor to the forum and my thread but, since I've just seen the surgeon for a check-up, I thought I'd post an update. It's six months since I've seen the surgeon (I'm now more than nine months post-op) and, in the interim, I've gone back to an extended period of physiotherapy.

The surgeon says the new knee is mecanically fine - well-located and well-healed. As readers will know, I've had a very slow recovery but much to both of our surprise, I have a ROM of a degree or so more than 110. The surgeon was very pleased - he says the worse the damaged knee, often the lower the ROM afterwards and he regards any degree more than 105 degrees in my case as a success. He says that, if I am happy to continue with physio and my daily exercise-biking, I should because he thinks there could still be a bit more to come (the physio thinks so too). He said it's a year to recover for anyone and, in my case I should think of 15 months as muscles and tendons were so badly mangled. So I still have a big window in which to get better still. Back to see him in September for the series of three hyaluronic acid injections into the other knee, which is behaving itself reasonably well.

The last few weeks have seen a real change for me. A lot of the residual stiffness/tightness has faded away and I'm noticing the increased freedom of movement. A lot of my small fears (walking a distance without subsequent discomfort, steps, inclines) are disappearing and Him Indoors (who should receive a medal for the care and support he offers) says that I am happier, more energetic, more confident.

Lessons learnt:

• trust what the surgeon, GP and Bonesmarties say. I should have accepted much earlier on that they know a lot more about recovery from knee replacement surgery than I do
• thank heavens every day for Him Indoors
• then thank heavens for the French medical system, which provided excellent care
• and then thank heavens separately for the surgeon. It was serendipity that I went to him and I'd trust him with my life
• and thank heavens a fourth time for family and friends who got me through it
• speak up. Physio was ghastly until I had a talk with the physio and explained that I didn't want her to bend/force my knee. We now get on extremely well (I'm making her a quilt as a gift for when I finish) and she really persevered when I was reluctant, tired...she now sees it a her personal mission to get me as well as possible
• if I couldn't do it beforehand (due to age, weight, fitness, inclination etc.) the chances are I'm not going to be able to magically do it after the surgery. So - realistic expectations. If that bothers me, it's up to me to change it (well, fitness, inclination and weight - age is non-negotiable)
• I really admire people who deal with permanent disability and pain. I have had a short brush with both and, sadly, I am neither brave or stoic and I am a whiner
• prevention is better than cure. I'm already doing a regular exercise program with the other leg/knee so that I'll be in better shape for the surgery when it comes.

Sue in warm but overcast Aix en Issart

 

[maryo52]

Great report! Too bad about the School of Hard Knocks is life's only school, at least fro humans!

My ROM continued to improve regardless of what I did. He's right, in some cases 110 is like summiting Everest. But getting there is not fun!!

 

[sheryl7]

Hello Sue.
After a quick l look through your thread.
You really have seem to have come a long way.all things considering.
I agree with the surgeon, that you still have marked room for more improvement to be seen.
I wish you well in the continuation of your recovery.
And do please stop by every so often yo update use on your successes.
Take care....