I thought I would give an update on my TKR at about 10 weeks. A couple of weeks ago, a blood test was done, which still came back with high inflammatory indicators, and my surgeon decided to take a sample of synovial fluid from the knee. That produced a cloudy liquid, and after a couple days a positive test for bacteria. It was not a bacteria that my surgeon or anyone was used to seeing in the knee and that was confusing to everyone.
While my doctor was going back-and-forth with an infectious disease specialist, someone in the hospital became informed of the gram positive test and called me up on a Saturday night and said I should immediately come into the ER. I did so, and was admitted to the hospital as an in-patient. There followed a couple of days of tests, 2 more vials of synovial fluid, and more deliberation. My doctor spent a lot of time explaining things to me as I lay in the hospital bed, and I eventually we agreed that he would have to go in and do a revision surgery. We decided that he would try to simply remove the plastic parts and clean things out unless the metal parts would come out easily.
After 2 days, on August 5th, there followed a three hour operation, after which my doctor told me he found that the joint was a “mess“, including a bit of damaged bone which had to be removed. He was forced to remove everything, including the metal parts which the bone had now fused with as per plan, and do a total revision, removing all the parts by sort of digging and sawing them out. Then after cleaning and bathing everything with antibiotic, he inserted new components, this time with a glue which was infused with antibiotic.
Even with the general anesthetic, I woke up as I was being wheeled out of the operating room and for about 20 minutes I experienced pain at about a 12 on a scale of 10. I never had so much pain in my life. It took that long for them to find the anesthesiologist who was going to give me a pain block shot in the thigh , which helps limit the pain a lot for a couple of days. Perhaps partly because of that delay, I spent the next two days in the hospital, trying to stabilize my pain level and at least get up to walk around a little and climb about three steps.
Then, before releasing me, they installed a PICC line in my arm so that I can have antibiotics administered at home for the next six weeks. Also, as does anyone with revision surgery, I now have to start the whole healing process all over again, but this time with a knee and a leg which seem more swollen and have more pain than the first time around. At least they have prescribed a 10 mg oxy instead of a 5 mg for a while. I hope to get to a point where my wife and I can administer the infusion for the next six weeks by ourselves, so we will only have to undergo the repetitive PT visits at home and in the hospital as time goes on.
As I said before, we are at least enjoying a Medicare benefit of many home delivered meals over the next few weeks due to my wife’s recent one week stay in the hospital for gallbladder surgery. This makes cooking much less of a problem. Also, in a about a week, we will have that stair lift installed for our two-story house, and that should also help a lot.
Thanks for helping me out with your encouragement and empathy. I know that there are other folks who have had the same kind of a problem, and I guess it’s just the luck or the draw for all of us. We can’t all have a smooth and rapid recovery from this type of an operation.
United States
