TKR RubyWhitesocks TKR recovery

should I be wearing a compression stocking on my surgery leg? I just need something to help reduce the swelling in my foot because it is the most painful thing on my surgery leg.
 
I don't mean to imply that my whole surgery leg doesn't have swelling, it is just the foot/toes that are hurting.
 
Hi Rubywhitesocks
I had tremendous pain and swelling in my foot also. While I expected knee pain having that kind of foot pain concerned me. My surgeon told me that a lot of manipulation of the leg takes place at the foot and ankle. My foot and ankle hurt for a good month before it went away. Hope my answer helps a bit.
 
@Ruby white socks, I put a cold wrap around my swollen foot, and elevated it while on my Lounge Doctor. This was during the first week, when I was black and blue.
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feeling trepidation on morning of first day of PT post left TKR...my leg is so swollen, I'm wondering if I should have been wearing compression stockings this whole time. I really didn't expect to be hit so hard by the emotional component of doing all of this. feel like my thoughts are all over the place.
 
Hi Rubywhitesocks,
There is lots of emotional “stuff” that can go along with this surgery, so rest assured we all get it! I was a complete basket case right after my first TKR, but I learned lots from that and have known what to expect this time so the emotional aspect has been fine.

Please DO read the articles ESPECIALLY those regarding PT! There is a tendency in the US for the PTs trained here to have a “no pain no gain” orientation. Specifically, they may think it’s okay to push your leg to make it bend! Do NOT allow that to be done, especially given your level of swelling! You can refuse to let them touch your leg if you wish! They are hired by you, and are there to help, not hurt you! They are there on your dime so do not let them bully you as some have done to other members.

Wish you had someone going with you to help support you saying no to any force at all being used!

I will send hope that the PT you see has a greater understanding about not trying to force your leg to meet some need of theirs!

Let us know how it goes!
 
I agree with BBCG, there is no need for a PT to hurt you, especially with the swelling you have. We are not trying to scare you about PT, though we probably have, but so many of our members have had the wrong kind of PT, including me. It wasn’t until I found Bonesmart that I learned I could say no, I thought they knew best and I had to do what they said.

Your PT should do things to help your swelling, not give you a list of exercises, or bend your knee “to help” :no-fin:

And, if you have a day when you’re not feeling up to going to the PT office, or to have them come to your house, if it’s home PT, it’s ok to cancel an appointment. You are so very early in recovery that this is going to be a big event. Right now it is more important to rest and just give your knee gentle movements.

Regaining our ROM is more about Time than repetitions of a list of exercises.

Time to recover.
Time for pain and swelling to settle.
Time to heal.

Our range of motion is right there all
along just waiting for 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. Normal activity is the key to success.
 
Hello there

Well done on your surgery! Post op days 1 2 and 3 It was terrible . I hardly urinated during the day but during the night it was dreadful . I had to use a bed pan which was not easy what so ever.
Im home and Day 12 now and it all seems to have settled down well . I drink a lot of H2O, always have and Im up during the night as I was before surgery .
Hang in there
Jan x
 
I am a compression stocking wearer. I have had poor veins for years and the swelling from my knee surgeries is vastly better when I wear them. They are also comforting. I wear Jobst thigh high type.
 
@RubyWhitesocks
I was sent home with a compression stocking and was told to keep it on for a week(take off to shower) and to take a baby aspirin each day.
I also started PT in their office 2 days after my surgery. They were pretty aggressive, and at one point I was setback from this therapy. I then took a break and when I went back, I stood up to my PT and told him that if it hurts, we are stopping!
With my next knee, I am going to wait a week to start, give my baby knee a little time to heal!
Take care, and take time for healing!
M
 
It's ok to challenge yourself a little, but the knee will tell you when you need to back off.
 
feeling trepidation on morning of first day of PT post left TKR...my leg is so swollen, I'm wondering if I should have been wearing compression stockings this whole time. I really didn't expect to be hit so hard by the emotional component of doing all of this. feel like my thoughts are all over the place.
Hi there
I posted about this yesterday as I was sitting crying and feeling so so sorry for myself
The lovely folks on here responded by assuring me this is normal and all part of the process

have a wee cry… tears are healing

Jan x
 
feeling trepidation on morning of first day of PT post left TKR...my leg is so swollen, I'm wondering if I should have been wearing compression stockings this whole time. I really didn't expect to be hit so hard by the emotional component of doing all of this. feel like my thoughts are all over the place.
Hi there
I posted about this yesterday as I was sitting crying and feeling so so sorry for myself
The lovely folks on here responded by assuring me this is normal and all part of the process

have a wee cry… tears are healing

Jan x
Thanks, Jan.
I don't really know how much to stick to discussion of just the physical/emotional aspects of the current post TKR situation I find myself in and the layers and levels of confusion and indecision I seem to be swimming in: but just as a knee is part of a system that can break down in many ways, the person who has TKR becomes part of a system of surgeon, patient, PT people and well meaning people who just want to help out by putting their advice forward when clearly there is no "one size fits all" answer to a lot of the new questions that you only think to ask AFTER you have already replaced a part of yourself that has been painful for years and was only ever going to get worse with something that might offer hope of new life, free from pain, but only after going through a procedure that necessarily will have pain associated with it on the way toward that better quality of life. And since that part of you comes in a set of two, you get to experience all of this stuff twice, so you may as well take mental notes of what this is like because it might give you some small chance of making the second go round just a tiny bit easier. But man is it hard to "live in the Now" with all of that going on in the background. Hopefully this doesn't all just seem like the ravings of a patient up at 4 am to get his pain med and then try to return to whatever kind of sleep the system of his body will allow.
 
feeling trepidation on morning of first day of PT post left TKR...my leg is so swollen, I'm wondering if I should have been wearing compression stockings this whole time. I really didn't expect to be hit so hard by the emotional component of doing all of this. feel like my thoughts are all over the place.
Hi there
I posted about this yesterday as I was sitting crying and feeling so so sorry for myself
The lovely folks on here responded by assuring me this is normal and all part of the process

have a wee cry… tears are healing

Jan x
Thanks, Jan.
I don't really know how much to stick to discussion of just the physical/emotional aspects of the current post TKR situation I find myself in and the layers and levels of confusion and indecision I seem to be swimming in: but just as a knee is part of a system that can break down in many ways, the person who has TKR becomes part of a system of surgeon, patient, PT people and well meaning people who just want to help out by putting their advice forward when clearly there is no "one size fits all" answer to a lot of the new questions that you only think to ask AFTER you have already replaced a part of yourself that has been painful for years and was only ever going to get worse with something that might offer hope of new life, free from pain, but only after going through a procedure that necessarily will have pain associated with it on the way toward that better quality of life. And since that part of you comes in a set of two, you get to experience all of this stuff twice, so you may as well take mental notes of what this is like because it might give you some small chance of making the second go round just a tiny bit easier. But man is it hard to "live in the Now" with all of that going on in the background. Hopefully this doesn't all just seem like the ravings of a patient up at 4 am to get his pain med and then try to return to whatever kind of sleep the system of his body will allow.
Morning
Let me start by saying I hope you got some pain free sleep . It’s a nightmare to begin with isn’t it?? I’m 2 weeks post op today , aware I’m at early stages of recovery but it’s getting slightly less painful, or it must be, as I’m not reading on my kindle , or watching stupid TicToc in the wee small hours . I am recording a video diary , just for me as a visual log of this journey
Take care :)

Jan x
 
RubyWhite, as long as it relates to your knee, you can discuss any aspect of it you wish. Yes, there are so many layers to this very challenging post-op recovery. I also had my 2nd knee done quite soon after the first and it was better knowing what to expect, though not particularly easier since the 2nd surgery, on top of the first, drains your energies exponentially more than the first alone, so be ready for that. 2 MAJOR surgeries on top of each other is a double whammy, believe me! But you will get through it and hopefully will be as happy as I to have gotten them both taken care of! Soldier on!
 
RubyWhite, as long as it relates to your knee, you can discuss any aspect of it you wish. Yes, there are so many layers to this very challenging post-op recovery. I also had my 2nd knee done quite soon after the first and it was better knowing what to expect, though not particularly easier since the 2nd surgery, on top of the first, drains your energies exponentially more than the first alone, so be ready for that. 2 MAJOR surgeries on top of each other is a double whammy, believe me! But you will get through it and hopefully will be as happy as I to have gotten them both taken care of! Soldier on!
Okay, I guess for me what is part of the emotional aspect of this is just that actually using a walker to get to the car to be driven by my current lovely wife is giving me flashbacks to when I was the caregiver to my first wonderful wife when she was going through her battle against breast cancer that she ultimately lost her life to. So while I am aware that I am voluntarily going through two surgeries to improve my quality of life and be able to be a better life-mate and partner for wife two and wife one was in the midst of a horrible battle which led to her losing chunks of herself slowly, it wasn't until I had an actual old part of me that was badly carved out of me and a nice new functioning knee that the rest of my body has to freak out about and adjust to that I internalized parts of the struggle that wife one went through years ago, even though I always was as supportive and loving and part of my wife's cancer battle team as I knew how to be.

You can be there for your partner and have their back and still not realize how completely clueless you are to what is actually happening to them internally in real time beyond whatever they are able and choose to attempt to communicate and convey to you and what you are able to empathetically and logically glean from the daily changes you see in them. So going into this TKR, I was aware that I was seeing my current wife is way more worried about the surgery itself than I was, and I tried to be strong and supportive to her, assuring her that the surgeon knows what he is doing and that we would find our way through it to the other side after the needed healing time. It is definitely true that I was only minorly worried about the surgery itself, and perhaps I was just so worn down from the daily pain level tolerance of dealing with two bad knees that I just figured no sane person in my exact situation (retired/living in a three-level condo and hoping to live there at least the 15 years more I just refinanced the mortgage for) would say no to finding a way to get TKR to happen as soon as the opportunity presented itself since the last knee injections I got did nothing to alleviate the pain. Regardless, I am still trying to play the role of strength and not vulnerability, but I have to be able to be at least as vulnerable as I am in physical reality and I want to be sensitive and share well and fruitfully the emotional vulnerability so my wife of today will learn what I learned with my first wife, couples are there for each other and support each other through these tough times. So I am trying to be adequately appreciative of all that my wife is doing to keep our household going, and demonstrate my strength dealing with the adversity and loops that being recuperating and active in my own recovery as a patient can be.

I have been so blessed with good health other than my knees that my only prior surgeries were a childhood (5 yrs old) hernia surgery and last November's Nasal Polyp removal. So being limited to how I do things in my own house at age 58 is a new experience for me.
 
Hey

I have just read your very honest post . Going to read again and reply

Jan
 
tomorrow will be PT session number 2, early morning session. Mostly I will schedule them in the afternoons so my Wife will be able to drive me (she's not a morning person by nature) but we have a friend who will get me there and home.

I really feel pretty positive based on my home practice of the exercises, and the fact that I must be doing decent with the pain control at this point, because I only have had a couple small twinges of the knee as it was nearing time to take my next med and the thigh muscle above the knee can just start to talk in the background, but I can sit with an icepad on either side of my knee and circle it in the area and massage it away.

I am walking with the walker to placate my wife, but I have it collapsed with the two sides in line with the midframe and just wheel it along ahead of me to remind myself to slow down and stick to my center of balance, which is really good from my Tai Chi/Qigong these past several years.

I'll be one week in tomorrow, and my ice machine I ordered is supposed to arrive, so I'm hoping to give it a test run after PT. I know that there is a "no pain/no gain" mentality that is prevalent in many places in our culture and I am glad that it is NOT the prevalent philosophy espoused here in this forum. I have had the pain prior to the TKR for ten year--so to me, no pain is a gain in and of itself. That coupled with my belief in flow/chi and just working with the joints as gateways to allow energy to flow through the universe (into myself and from myself back into the universe) have already convinced me that slow and steady will win this race and I will keep a bit of reserve rather than push myself to the limit. Growth will happen if I don't impede it. I want to be strong for the right knee TKR in August and that means mentally, physically and emotionally/spiritually. Love to all of you and may your road to recovery be as smooth as it can be.
 
I am eager to get back to some tai chi, let me know if you find any videos of tai chi after tkr. I think keeping the hip joint open for flow has to be beneficial
 
no pain is a gain in and of itself.
I love that, it is so true! I hope your recovery continues to go well!
My surgeon told me when I felt I no longer needed the walker, to use is a few more days. Falling is not recommended
I have found meditation helpful.
Take care!
 

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