TKR RubyWhitesocks TKR recovery

RubyWhitesocks

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Hello, everyone. I appreciate having a place to vent and document how my TKR recovery is going.

I am 58 yrs old male, and had left knee replaced two days ago, and I have had two rough nights filled with bouts of frequent urination. It was bad enough that I decided to go to Urgent Care to check on whether or not I have a UTI following my surgery, but the doctor there said that the "quick test" didn't show a UTI and gave me a med to help relieve the burning pain while he is sending the sample to the Lab for further analysis. He thinks that I am just having irritation from the catheter used during surgery, but I don't even really know if they used a catheter on me, as they had me put on a Depends prior to surgery and the nurse said that people usually leaked during surgery.

But I have a plastic urinal beside my bed that I have to continually hop out of bed to pee in and it will happen several times an hour. Since I have to hook up to a CPAP at night, it really is unhandy to try to make it to the toilet, and sometimes I will have a large stream and amount of urine and other times just a little trickle. Almost as soon as I lay back down, I get the urge to pee again regardless of whether or not it was a decent stream or a trickle, and every time I wake up I feel the urge. But part of my joy at having a CPAP was that I wasn't being woken up multiple times a night to pee, and now that appears that I've lost that for the time being. At least this med is keeping it from burning like it was doing, so the Urgent Care visit was worthwhile.

I am drinking a lot of water to stay hydrated to help speed my recovery, but this just seems ridiculous. I am scheduled for TKR on the right knee in August and hope that I won't go through this particular problem with that one also.

I am a little worried about having to wear Depends underwear to my PT appointments, as I have never had this problem in the past. Just wonder how many of you have had similar problems with this and how long that aspect lasted.

As far as the knee and left leg are doing at this point, they are swollen pretty tight, and swinging in and out of the right side of the bed is a little hard on my surgery leg, but I just have to grimace and bear it. I have to hope things will improve soon.
 
You likely had a nerve block which can affect bladder and bowels. I had trouble with both, one overactive and the other underactive. It was about a week before everything worked again.
 
Welcome RubyWhitesocks! You came to the right place. With my first TKR I was peeing all the time for two days and had to wear Depends for the first time in my life. The situation resolved itself relatively soon. Once you get on a more normal schedule, the good thing about having to get up and pee is that it gets you moving on a regular basis--which is important in and of itself....
 
Ruby, welcome to BoneSmart and congratulations on your new knee!
prior to surgery I never got up during the night to pee. After surgery I was up every night. It’s just part of the whole thing. It resolved in a few weeks. Besides the nerve block, your body is reabsorbing a lot of fluid from the operative area and that has to be eliminated. Things will get better.
 
Hi and Welcome!

I will leave you our Recovery Guidelines. Each article is short but very informative. Following these guidelines will help you have a less painful recovery.

Just keep in mind all people are different, as are the approaches to this recovery and rehab. The key is, “Find what works for you.“ Your doctors, PTs and BoneSmart are available to help, but you are the final judge as to the recovery approach you choose.

Knee Recovery: The Guidelines
1. Don’t worry: Your body will heal all by itself. Relax, let it, don't try and hurry it, don’t worry about any symptoms now, they are almost certainly temporary
2. Control discomfort:
rest
ice
take your pain meds by prescription schedule (not when pain starts!)​

3. Do what you want to do BUT
a. If it hurts, don't do it and don't allow anyone - especially a physical therapist - to do it to you​
b. If your leg swells more or gets stiffer in the 24 hours after doing it, don't do it again.​


4. PT or exercise can be useful BUT take note of these

5. At week 4 and after you should follow this

6. Access to these pages on the website

The Recovery articles:
The importance of managing pain after a TKR and the pain chart
Swollen and stiff knee: what causes it?
Energy drain for TKRs
Elevation is the key
Ice to control pain and swelling
Heel slides and how to do them properly
Chart representation of TKR recovery
Healing: how long does it take?

Post op blues is a reality - be prepared for it
Sleep deprivation is pretty much inevitable - but what causes it?

There are also some cautionary articles here
Myth busting: no pain, no gain
Myth busting: the "window of opportunity" in TKR
Myth busting: on getting addicted to pain meds

We try to keep the forum a positive and safe place for our members to talk about their questions or concerns and to report successes with their joint replacement surgery.

While members may create as many threads as they like in the majority of BoneSmart’s forums, we ask that each member have only One Recovery Thread. This policy makes it easier to go back and review the member’s history before providing advice, so please post any updates or questions you have right here in this thread.
 
As far as the knee and left leg are doing at this point, they are swollen pretty tight, and swinging in and out of the right side of the bed is a little hard on my surgery leg, but I just have to grimace and bear it. I have to hope things will improve soon.
It can take a while for this surgical swelling to go down, read the articles in the recovery guidelines about icing and elevating. Don’t do a lot of exercises yet, right now you just need gentle movements and short walks to give your knee mobility.
 
Ruby, welcome to BoneSmart and congratulations on your new knee!
prior to surgery I never got up during the night to pee. After surgery I was up every night. It’s just part of the whole thing. It resolved in a few weeks. Besides the nerve block, your body is reabsorbing a lot of fluid from the operative area and that has to be eliminated. Things will get better.
Thanks for responding, I guess this means I should be prepared for this in August again with TKR 2, on the right knee. Even just hearing this stuff helps me calm down and realize it can be dealt with, it just threw me for a loop.
 
You likely had a nerve block which can affect bladder and bowels. I had trouble with both, one overactive and the other underactive. It was about a week before everything worked again.
yes, a nerve block was given. So far haven't had a bowel movement, but started taking a stool softener last night, hoping that will help get things moving.
 
They pump fluids into you pre-op, during the op and post-op. Everyone experiences this frequent urination to some extent. This will ease in a few days.
 
@RubyWhitesocks, for the first two weeks while I was on narcotics, I couldn’t go either. I tried OTC laxatives with minimal effect. My visiting nurse referred me to good old Prune Juice, and voila, no problem since.
 
tonight my foot and ankle are really swollen tight. I can still wiggle my toes, but they are packed tighter than sardines. I will definitely be icing and elevating my foot at the heel. I have been icing the knee and upper leg off and on all day, but the pain meds seem to be doing their job.
 
Sounds good, RubyWhite! Keep elevating to reduce the swelling.
And I still eat 3 prunes a day to stay regular!
 
The frequent urination thing seems to be lightening up a little on my third night post surgery. Still a little worse than desirable for a good night's sleep, but I think I did a little better on the sleep/rest portion of the program. I am definitely doing better at using my walker to navigate the small paths that I need to make my way through. I'm so glad the pre-surgery PT person showed me that you could use the walker folded up with the wheels in line with your center, since I have good balance from my tai chi/qigong exercises that works pretty well for me going from the bed to the bathroom and in our narrow hallways. I am so hopeful that when I recover from this and my scheduled right TKR in August, I will be able to return to my tai chi/qigong routines. Does this forum include any discussions of post-recovery activities that TKR patients have successfully participated in, or will I need to look elsewhere for that?
 
Hi Ruby
I plan to resume my tai chi chin practice very soon. Also, I did Silver Sneakers and Chair Yoga prior to my knee surgery.
Hoping to resume these practices very shortly
 
RubyWhite, just browse through previous stories, or put words in the search bar to see what people have accomplished post-op. I have read of men who played full court basketball after TKR. Check with your doc, but I’m fairly certain you can resume those activities AFTER your knee heals.
 
So today (day 3 after LTKR) my left foot is the most painful thing. It is swollen and just hurts to put weight on it more so than the knee. What are people's best ideas for proper icing and elevation of the foot rather than the knee that was operated on?
 
You would elevate your foot would the same as you would your knee.



The above articles are in the Recovery Guidelines that we gave you in post #6. If you haven’t had a chance to read through them I encourage you to do so, there’s a lot of good information in them, and each one is not long to read.

The Lounge Doctor is a foam elevating pillow that many of our members love.
 

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