It's been almost a month since I last posted. I still have the inflammation discomfort/pain. I'm still taking the Gabapentin 3 x a day. I take Tumeric for my inflammation as I would like to stay away from the anti-inflammatories (they don't seem to work on this inflammation). My OS put me on the 5 mg. of Prednisone for a month and that definitely helped. He said too, there was less swelling in the joint. I did more too. I told him I wanted to be off it to make sure I could still do what I was doing. I can. But... I can tell the inflammation is back to how it was. My next plan this summer is to ease off the Gabapentin so I will be able to measure my true pain/discomfort.
This is the time for my annual blood work. In addition to the normal stuff, my dr. is adding 4 tests for checking my bodies inflammation. I didn't ask her for the allergy blood testing yet, as she didn't feel I'm having any allergic reaction (neither did my OS or my allergist). "Just a slow healer". We'll see where all this leads when I get the blood draw next week (I wanted to make sure the Prednisone was out of my system).
Otherwise, I've added a day of hiking these last several weeks. I use my trekking poles (not sure my natural knee would make it without). It's only 2 miles, but there are some hills and I can tell it's a great workout and my knee is not angry or upset at all. I've also added a day of swimming - I do the freestyle stroke and swim non stop for about 30 min (it's about 3/4 of a mile). My knee felt good all day after the swimming. Note to self - add more of that.
I continue to use the foam roller on my IT band and hamstrings (all sides of the hamstring) as the roller seems to help the most! So... yes, I still have discomfort/some pain that I truly hope goes away, but I am definitely doing more. I can tell when I exercise or do some activity, the inflammation seems to get "worked out" or at least the heat is less and the joint feels better for a bit. A little thing, like vacuuming yesterday, didn't create a lot of discomfort like it used to. I'm not pain-free enough to use my OS for my next TKR though! That's still up in the air.
And... whatever happened to "April showers, bring May flowers"? We had a pretty hard frost this morning. Those of you in the U.S. north and northeast... I'm sure you're more than ready for spring.