[TKR] luvcats recovery box

No joy on the pain meds from the surgeons office.

Edited to remove much whinging.

 

I have a great many bad words to say on the topic of pain meds. Which I will keep to myself.

Deep breath...

Lack of napping is not the lack of trying and resting, I just dont fall asleep. Its always been a problem. My bedroom is lovely and cool and dark. Should be perfect.

Saw the person who sets me up for PT today. If his philosophy is carried through by the people he assigns, it will be a great experience.

Beloved brought me Chipotle for lunch. It was lovely. I froze a lot of food before I went in, but not a lot of variety. I was ready for something fresh and yummy.

 

I can tell how much better I'm feeling as stir-crazy has started to set in! I'm not quite focused enough to take up reading, but I should be able to watch some weightier movies. We shall see.

My biggest complaint, aside from the pain med issue, is my leg is swollen. SO SWOLLEN. I know it's normal, but it's very uncomfortable. I think part of it is my normal tendency to swell, combined with healing and a lack of exercise. My body is just aching to get back into the pool to move, and that's just not going to happen for a long while.

I'm currently ensconced in our upstairs. Although I do 'laps' walking up and down the hall, it's just not that much exercise. I've been keeping my leg elevated all the time, but I don't think it's quite high enough. Today I'm going to try the Lounge Dr. pillow again and see if I tolerate it.

 

Thanks for the reminder. I have my lounge doctor properly in place and I seem to be tolerating it as I haven't before.

 

The Lounge Doctor pillow was just the thing yesterday. Still swollen of course, but the skin is no longer tight and I can move a bit more easily. I'll be back in position most of today.

The home care nurse is coming. She'll remove my dressing and we'll see how things are healing. I just started having a bit of an itch along the incision, so I know it's healing well.

Today I'll finally get the urgently needed refill on my meds. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get in a nap after that. I'm getting about 5 solid hours a night, but mostly because I hoard my meds for nighttime.

I start home PT today. I'm encouraged after a phone chat with the person coming. I mentioned that she'll need to find her own way up the stairs as my husband will be in a meeting. I said that I hadn't been doing stairs since I got home because our stairs are slippery and I wasn't confident. She said that was an excellent call on my part, so she probably has sense. I hope it goes well.

I friend turned me on to the show "Corner Gas" on Prime. It's wonderful. Lots of light, snarky humor set in a small town in Saskatchewan. It's exactly what I need right now for laying around with my foot in the air. If I drift off well, the plots aren't exactly hard to follow.

I also recently enjoyed Sidney White, movie on Netflix. I didn't know it, but it's mostly a remake of Revenge of the Nerds, if the original had had a strong female lead and a more coherent plot. I'd definitely recommend it as fun without too much angst.

 

2 very busy days.

Yesterday the home care nurse came. Homecare has been such a disappointment to me. I had a lot of it for my surgery and post abscess care over the winter and now. They spend so much time literally ticking boxes on their tablets, I always feel very much unimportant to the process. She removed my dressing, but I had to grab her hand and make her slow down as she tried to rip the skin off along with the adhesive. It cold have gone very badly.

My incision is a work of art. Clean and sharp and healing beautifully. I'm going to have a very minimal scar, not that I cared much about that.

Much later the home PT person came. She was great. Answered questions, gave me good expectations for what outpatient PT will look like, and she showed me a stretch Beloved can help me do to stretch one of the very unhappy muscles in my calf. That made the visit a huge success in my eyes!

I finally got my med refill and with pain managed again I realized I felt pretty good, stable enough to test my showering procedure. I wasn't sure about getting my foot over the edge of the tub, but it turns out I can already bend the new knee more than the original. That was exciting, and everyone knows the first shower after the hospital is divine! It felt great to be really clean.

Today was another busy day. I finally met with my pain specialist, and she had some rather uncomplimentary things to say about the pain management I got from the hospital and surgeon's office. She said they had completely neglected to account for the fact that I've already been on long term opioids and so I was horribly under medicated. I certainly felt under medicated. She has completely revised my medications and she decided that she will manage all the meds for my next surgery. I'm not sure how that works, but they must have a process for that and I'm going in to see her the week before my RTKR in September. That is such a huge relief.

It was my first day to get dressed in actual clothes. I went down our stairs with no trouble since I've been one footing them for years. Its a fair walk to my doctor's office in a giant building so I got some good exercise and that worked out some of the cramps in my thigh.

I spent the rest of the day in my recliner. I'm thinking I should have gone back upstairs because it doesn't elevate my leg as much as the lounge Dr pillow and my leg is painfully swollen. I'll be glad when that phase passes.

Today was such a success I'm going to go to the store with Beloved tomorrow. I'll be riding a courtesy cart, but I will be nice to be out.

 

Question: For those of you who had an 'epic swelling' phase, about how long did it last? I know it's perfectly normal and healthy, but it interferes with my walking practice.

I love Gentleman Jack. I'm about half way through what is out I think. For reasons, I can only access it from downstairs, so I'll get to watch more next week. It's utterly brilliant!
For me, British shows tend to be hit or miss, and I didn't get into Call the Midwife the first time I tried it. Maybe I'll start it again and see how I feel about it.

ROFL. You forgot the food! I made my own food. And by made I mean I used my phone to order in my favorite kababs and then I took it out of the container and on to a plate. lol Can't have Maslow without food security.


Ice is an interesting thing. I iced almost 24/7 at first, but then it started aggravating my cramped muscles and I just do a little now and then, for about 20 minutes until it starts to not feel good. But this is the second night in a row where I've gone to sleep and woken up in discomfort and gotten an ice pack and gone back to sleep.

My specialist also explained my leg cramps. She pointed out that because of the deformation of the original knee, my muscles didn't engage properly. Now that they do, every single movement is like an intense workout for that muscle. Basically, just existing is hard exercise for a muscle that took about 4 years off. She officially approved an approach that I wanted but my husband wasn't comfortable with. Heat the upper thigh, then ice the knee, alternating. The heat felt amazing yesterday. There will be more in my future today.