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TKR Midwest Girl's New Knee Journey - A Year Later.

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@midwest girl , @susanc (TKR buddies, May 13th)

I have tried twice to post a message about sleep, lack thereof. As it is 2:45.am, and lo and behold as soon as I am ready too post it! I hit something that makes it go away! What the hay. Oh well, I just need some advise on what to do to get some sleep, as my knee hurts to sleep in my side, and I have never been able to sleep on my back, pain meds keep me up all night! What in the world is going on? I am going to the recliner! Right now..I have got to go up into the office tomorrow and I'm going to have baggy eyes, swollen, leg and generally look
a mess! It has been a tough week, I didn't expect to have to work 3 days in a row (of course I have not been cleared yet) so I have had some sleep, cuz soon as my husband gets me home, I change clothes , lay down on couch, turn Mr. ICEMAN on, elevate and promptly fall asleep! And my husband PROMPTLY wakes me up and tells me to it! I would rather sleep than eat at this point in my life! I guess I will have a sweet talk with him later on when he takes me to work about this. I just don't want to hurt his feelings! And I am thinking if all of this attention he is giving me and feel bad to say anything!

Midwest girl, I had a great pity party last night! Cried for about two hours. Fell better after, but silly too!
What is wrong with me?

I hope you all are getting some much deserved rest!
 
I meant to say my husband promptly wakes me up and tells me it's time to eat dinner!
 
There are good days and bad days. I'm glad that so far the good out weigh the bad. But when they are bad, they feel really bad. I've been doing ok. I've been doing ok with taking 1000mg of Tylenol 4 times a day and icing. I'm never completely pain free but most times it keeps it tolerable at about a 3. My pt can't believe I'm just using Tylenol for pain at only 4 weeks. I tried with pain meds. It just doesn't work for my body. I actually best when I'm more active - walking etc but am also aware there is a fine line when it becomes too much activity.

Sleep is still a huge issue for me. I'm wide awake until the wee hours - like 3:00 or 4:00am. And I'm not napping during the day so I would think I would be tired but I'm not. I've been trying to sleep in bed but gave up Friday night and came to the recliner and slept for 5 hours. But last night I started with the recliner and couldn't sleep but maybe an hour and gave up and went to bed and slept pretty well. I think only because I was so exhausted from the lack of sleep all weekend.

PT is going well. I'm still improving on my flexion with every session. I'm currently at 116 degrees flexion. Extension has never been an issue. I was at 0 degrees my first PT session. This is my last week at 50% weight bearing. So my exercise regime will start changing. Actually she's going to start tomorrow with adding weight to my surgical leg. Next week she is on vacation so I will have a different therapist which is making me a little nervous. Yesterday I saw this therapist measure the flex on this man and he pushed his leg back so hard that the man screamed out in pain and rolled over in agony. My PT has never done that with me nor will she. I've gone to this guy before so when I see him next week I'm laying the law down. I will tell him either that we are not measuring that day or if we do, he is not allowed to push me past discomfort. And if he does it - I'm done with him and will either ask for a different therapist for Wednesday or cancel that appt all together. And I will tell my PT - who is one of the co-owners- what happened. I don't believe in tattling but I also don't believe in causing harm or pain in others. I don't know what the fixation is with PT's wanting to measure your flexion at every session. My flexion is measured both sitting and laying down. I go to PT 3x a week, so my flexion is measured 6x each week. It's crazy!

As I was saying, yesterday was just such a depressing day for me. I had been so tired, my knee was swollen when I woke up. PT was hard - hard to do the things that were a breeze any other time. Because my body was so tired my leg felt like it was 500 lbs. I had higher pain level than normal - around a 6 - from knee to thigh. Just that deep ache. I was tired of just taking Tylenol. I was horrified of what I saw in PT and was already worrying on how I was going to handle it next week. I was tired of again dealing with family who don't understand about his hard and long this process is. I was a crying, feeling sorry for myself mess. I cried so hard and for so long that it wore me out and I slept for 2hrs. Woke up feeling a little better and I had spoke with a friend who is so understanding and compassionate. She does understand what I'm going through - having helped her husband go through BTKA and is in the process of therapy (at the same clinic as me) for rotator cuff surgery. So she understands the frustrations and is always reminding me that this is my journey, my recovery. Don't listen to others when they are trying to compare my recovery to something they had heard about. People who have never had to deal with chronic pain just don't understand. But I know that I am physically improving everyday. And I know - from being in this site - that everything I'm going through is normal. And I know I will be ok. It was just a weepy, frustrating and very lonely day yesterday. It's a beautiful day today so I think I'm going to go for a walk. Thanks for listening to me my friends.
 
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Your ROM is awesome. It is crazy to measure that often--all it does is provoke anxiety in the patient.
Now if we can get you some sleep. :bored:
 
I don't know what the whole purpose of it is. A validation for them? I can't even remember from session to session what my ROM is. I was more discouraged by the fact that my leg was so fatigued. It made me feel like a whimp!
 
I think you are doing beautilfully! I am just now getting to 116 ROM. You aren't feeling anything that most of us haven't felt and a lot of us have a support system surrounding us.
Last night I was exhausted and went to bed early but started waking up by midnight off and on and finally went to the recliner about 3 am. I don't know if sleep will ever be good. It just makes it so hard to get up and ready for work in the morning.

It is funny, when I have a different person running my therapy a lot of times they don't measure me...I have had my therapist tell me everyone does it a little different, so what one might get another one might not.

Keep your chin up! You will have tired days! I just went to the mall with my daughter and even though it wasn't a long shopping trip I know in the past i would have been more sore than i was today. Small victories!
 
I go to PT twice per week and rarely does my PT measure my ROM. Once I got over 125 he really stopped measuring flexion and we look at my extension by how close I am to touching the table when laying flat on my back. My OS did measure me almost two weeks ago at 3* on extension so my PT is able to get the back of my knee touching the table (so perfectly straight) with only a slight bit of pressure which doesn't cause any real pain and very little discomfort.

@midwest girl Is maybe PT 3x per week too much?
 
Thank you all for the kind words & encouragement. 3 days a week of PT is what was ordered. I actually like it. I feel so much better after PT. I know this will taper off to twice a week and then once a week. It's because of that MCL repair PT has been at a slower pace. But things will be picking up after this week.
 
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my home PT measured--at this point just to get a baseline.
 
What a weekend. Friday in aquatic PT it just bothered me for some reason. It agrevated my sciatica and just little twinges of pain in my knee. Yesterday I walked outside about half way around the block and then sat in one of those fabric lawn chairs for a little over an hour and them walked back home. I think that's the longest I've ever had my leg down. By the time I got home it was swelling - Knee and calf. Last night we had storms!!! Bad enough to where the tornado sirens went off. So I stood in my closet for quite awhile which aggravated my knee more. Lost power during the storm and didn't get it back until this afternoon. Needless to say no icing has been going on and my leg is swollen. Enough to where I can leave thumb indents in my calf. I'm elevating but no ice yet. I think everything should be about frozen so I can start icing again. Dreading PT tomorrow. It's a different therapist - mine is on vacation. Hoping the swelling will be down by then. And that I will stand firm in my resolve to not let this PT hurt me - especially when they measure flexion.
 
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Thanks @msmechanic58. Yes I'm definitely going to tell him about the swelling and maybe throw in a little story about the storm damage at my house - which I'm physically unable to do anything about (outside of getting friends to help me). Hoping I'll get a little sympathy and he'll go easy on me! Haha!!! Something so against what I would normally do. I've used this therapist before. He was the one who did the therapy on my left knee after a scope, and he pushed to the point of pain then. So I do feel like he knows me, so I'm hoping he really listens to me. And I'm hoping my regular PT left good instructions of what she wanted done this week. I'll let you all know what happens!
 
PT went fine! I told him exactly how it was going to happen and I had no problems. And I still increased my ROM. He did tell me that I did do too much this weekend. Too much walking. Told me to ice and elevate. First time a professional had told me to elevate my leg during this whole recovery.
 
What a downer of a day. Even though I'm not sleepy and it's not even dark outside yet, I'm going to bed. We will see how long I stay there. Good night all!
 
Ugh! 1:00am and still awake. But I've purposefully have been staying awake. Been monitoring tornadic storms with my brother via text. His storms, not mine. He lives 280 miles away, out in the country with their 4 yr old son. My sister-in-law is currently serving in the military in Afghanistan. So was just giving him some adult company. But now I have a headache and achy knee and PT in the morning. Hoping I'll fall asleep and sleep all night! Wouldn't that be a dream!!!!
 
Yes it was @msmechanic58 thanks for asking. The storm fizzled before it got to him. They've just been bombarded with storms & rain. They definitely don't need anymore rain for awhile. We are in a weather risk again today. Very hot and humid already this morning. Suppose to be in the high 90's today with high humidity. And my body can tell it. Very achy knee/leg and woke up with a massive headache. PT should be great today! Ha!
 
That is good! We had a tornado about a month ago. 4 went over and one set down a mile south of us. Hubby and son worked on storm shelter yesterday.
 
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