Sorry, I did see it last night for as you can see, I had edited your post. But it was around 1am and bed called!
Pain level now is that 1. If so sitting in recliner and just done 300 steps with walker so pain level 3
Please, do me a favour and put your Fitbit in your drawer! 300 steps is more than enough for one day!
Meds - prescribed 30 mg codeine 1 or 2 every 4 hours along with 2 500 mg paracetamol - cut down to take just the paracetamol every 4 hours and one codeine before bed and if necessary a codeine in the middle of the night
At 4 weeks out, you still need a good pain med. If codeine is making you nauseous, I suggest you contact your GP and request to be changed to something else. Tramadol is usually the drug of choice in the UK. Codeine's okay for hips but useless for knees. Tramadol, on the other had is an excellent pain killer and you can take it with paracetamol.
Left swollen between light and moderate sometimes more on the right
Okay - you did remember that swelling is a form of pain, didn't you? So did you factor this into your pain score?
ROM bend is approx 90 but straightness bad. My fault, I haven't done the straightness exercises. Was relying on the walking alternating between walker and crutches
No it's not 'your fault'. You actually don't need to do any exercises but more about that later. 90 degrees of flexion is good for 4 weeks out.
Icing knee constantly when in recliner and in bed only with ice packs
okay
Elevating leg - here is where I have the problem, have found this difficult can only do for 5 minutes then hurts so bad
Tell me, have you been told to keep your knee completely straight while you elevate? Like this
Because that's inevitably going to cause pain. You need to relax the muscles at the back of the knee a bit, like one of these positions
Activity level - just the walking back and forth between kitchen and lounge - approx 90 steps round trip - about 40 times a day in increments of 6 - 8 and the bathroom visits have tried doing small jobs like preparing tea a couple of times
That's far too much. Did you read all the articles left for you earlier in this thread? They were very specific in how long to do things ... it's in
post #2 and the specific articles I want you to look at here is this one
Activity progression for TKRs
Exercises done at home - all these just once a day
I know I should increase -
actually you will be surprised at what I am now going to tell you to do!
walking -
follow the instructions in the activity article I just left you
lots of ankle pumps -
these are only for circulation and to prevent blood clots when you were not very mobile. Not you are you can stop them!
leg raises
x 10 -
10 at a time is too many. Do just a couple first thing in the morning while you are still in bed. And once you can do them, you don't need to do them anymore!
butt squeezes x 10 -
stop these, they do no good and may even cause you pain
leg squeeze x 10 -
stop these too, they do no good and may even cause you pain
heel slides on bed x 10 -
heel slides are very easy to do badly and this is badly. There was another article in those left earlier - this one Heel slides and how to do them properly - but clearly you haven't read that one either 
Only had physio twice, last one was last Tuesday and she said she didn't need to see me again but I asked if I could go back in two weeks. So next one is a week Tuesday. She said my ROM was 90 but I needed to work on my straightening -
I don't agree - 'working' on your extension is entirely the wrong way to go about this.
In summary,
a) you need to read the articles
b) you need to do a lot less so you can rest more
c) you need to stop thinking 'I must, I've got to' and such
c) stop all the exercising and physio appts.
There are many peoples here who never did any exercising at all for their knee replacements. I was one, not even so much as a single heel slide! I recommend you read my recovery thread to see how little exercising I did for either knee!
Knee recoveries UK style Parts I & II (Josephine). Yes, and we all came out the other end with excellent results and having had a lot less pain too!
Fact it, it's not the exercising that gets you your ROM, it's time. Time to recover, time for swelling and pain to settle and time to heal. One thing that seems to be missing from all the PT's protocols is that all your ROM is there right from the start, just waiting for all that to happen so it can show itself. In the general run of things, it doesn't need to be fought for, worked hard for or worried about. It will happen. Exercise as in strength training is counter-productive and in the early weeks does more harm than good. Normal activity is the key to success.
One final article for you to read
Saying no to therapy - am I allowed to?
United Kingdom
