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TKR Strange New World

@Denny39 I can relate to your post about your second knee being slower to allow a cane then the first my first knee went so well and I was achieving milestones very quick. The OS told me that my second knee (6 weeks after my first) needed a lot more work and that should have told me something.

Same as you I was much slower switching to the cane. And when I was using the walker, I had to put much more weight on it. I also could not put all my weight on my new knee in the first two weeks, like I could with my first.

Then at week 3, my new knee really made headway. What started it was the swelling went down. I made great strides in weeks 3-4. Now at week 6 my newer knee is really doing well, although not quite up to my first at 12 weeks.

You are right in this being a journey. I done remember a lot of the first week of either knee and I think it’s because my mind does not really want to remember it. Life is getting back to normal now and while I was nervous doing my second knee 6 weeks from my first, I am now very glad both are done and I can focus on healing.

I have occasional pain but nothing like I had before the replacements.

I wish you the best!
 
@jeffjob Very interesting. I am now at 3 weeks and 1 day, and my new knee also is suddenly making unexpected and remarkable progress. I have not yet formally switched to the cane, yet this morning I was able to move freely around the bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen with neither of them. I also could not put my full weight on it, or lift it very far, for the first two weeks.

This is one c-r-a-z-y journey, and as has been said many times, there is just no comparing any two knees. They all seem to develop their own individual quirky ways. I waited 6 months, and that worked out well. I too am glad they’re both done (I’m also glad I have only 2 legs), now we can focus on full healing and recovery.
 
Yes @Didot, that makes good sense. I had my Left one done first, and waited 6 months. When I had the first one done, the other one was just as bad as the first. It still was able to help some, but I had to be careful not to demand too much from it. Having the Left one strong and pain free when the Right one was done really seems to have made a difference. My Right one seemed to be off to a much slower recovery than the first one. More stiffness, more pain, very painful to move very much for the first 10 days or so. But the last week has made an unbelievable difference, and as best as I can remember, my new one is better at this stage than the first one was. This of course, can’t be taken as a sure indication your experience will be the same, because knees are all different. But it does make sense. If you have 2 bad knees to begin with, immediately after your surgery, you still have 1 bad knee, but now you also have 1 REALLY bad knee. But that heals and gains strength so the second one has a stronger helper. Everyone of course is different, but I really believe that the progress of my new one is being greatly enhanced by the strength of the other.

At best, it’s a tough journey, but you will be looking back on it, and it will have been well worth it. I hope all goes very well for you.
 
Glad it's improving and hope, before long, you'll have two perfectly good knees!
 
I'm really glad.to see this discussion. I'm only a week out from my first replacement but I already have the surgery scheduled for September to have knee 2 done. I feel that I am healing quickly, but it has been years since my left leg has done much useful. Is she going to be ready to do a flight of stairs? That's my big worry. I'm glad to hear discussion about how well it is likely to go.
 
@luvcats, you said it has been years since your left leg las been very useful. Is that primarily due to the bad knee? I ask because 6 or 7 years before I had my first one done, I was having trouble with it, and my Primary Care doctor told me it was going to need to be replaced. I said, “No way!!!”. Changed my mind several years later when it became pretty much useless for anything other than walking on level ground. Now, it goes up and down stairs just fine, although it does get tired and slightly painful after a dozen or so levels. But it’s only 7 months out, and steadily improving. At one week out, you are still in a pretty rough stage of recovery. Improvements will be a little bit slow, sometimes hard to even realize during the first 2 weeks or so. But it will get better at an increasingly rapid pace. I’m 3 weeks and 1 day out on my second one, and the progress in the third week has been almost un believable. I hope it will for you as well.

Hang in there, take it 1 day at a time. This will pass and your new knee will serve you well.
 
@Denny39 Yes, my left knee became unreliable. Like it would come down just wrong sometimes and nearly buckle. It was scary. That's when I started using a cane for any distance and I started going up stairs one leg at a time.

I've been trying to counteract this in my pool walking, making sure I dont limp and take full steps. In the pool if it quits the worst is that I'll fall over in the water. The leg seems relatively strong, but I wont know until I try.

It's very early days, but the PT guy I saw yesterday thought that getting the left stair worthy by September completely doable. It comforts me.
 
I am already doing stairs 1 step at a time. I think it was early in the third month when I first began to do them normally.
 
@Denny39 What a small world!! I was actually born in Springfield and lived there until I was 6 months old. My dad moved us to Kansas City (Cass County, actually 40 minutes south of Kansas City) when he got on with the US Post Office. I now live in Jefferson County, about 30 minutes south of St. Louis. We like this side of the state better----just prettier to us, plus all of my in-laws are close by. :) I actually spent 6 yrs in Rolla for Undergrad + Graduate school, and I met my husband there the first day. So I guess I've lived in 4 different parts over the last 46 yrs, except for a 3 year stint in Houston, TX after grad school.

I still spent LOTS of time in Springfield over the years though. My mom was from Conway, and my dad was from Marshfield. I have more aunts, uncles, & cousins than I can count, and my closest aunt lived off of Battlefield Rd. We were there a lot in the summer as kids, as she was our "other mom" when my mom had surgery or my parents were moving from one house to the other. :) My parents retired back to Springfield in 2000 because of all the extended family, and I was there plenty these last 19 yrs---so much so the last 4 yrs that I now now my way around really well!!!! My dad passed in '14 so we went more to help my mom than anything and give my brother a break.

I doubt I get back much now except for funerals and an occasional trip to my brother's. My mom passed last December, and we got her estate settled and house sold in April. My brother lived with them the last few years to help, and he moved to Republic once the house sold. This is all very fresh, so it's weird knowing the next time I go, I'll drive right past the Springfield exits on I-44 and go a few more miles to the Republic turnoff. My knee isn't up to making the drive yet, so we're shooting for maybe late August or early September before we go spend a weekend with him. He comes up a lot though.

Thanks again for asking. What about you? Did you live there long?
 
@Rockgirl4 looks like probably a smaller world even than you thought. I know every town you mentioned; my favorite Rabbit hunting fields were around Republic, my first girlfriend lived in Marshfield, I considered going to the Rolla School of Mines, and near St. Louis, the Roaring River State Park provided great fishing. My mother moved to Kansas City after my father passed away, and my youngest son lives there now. My father also worked for the Post Office, and my parents managed an Apartment Complex on Battlefield Road called The Battlefield Towers.

I graduated from Central Senior High in 1957, and moved to California 3 weeks after graduating. I stayed there for 37 years, then moved to Massachusetts, back to California for 6 more years, back to Massachusetts, then down to South Carolina. So, I have lived in the Midwest, The West Coast, The East Coast, and the Deep South, which makes me both multi-lingual and multi-cultural. The plan now is for this to be the final location.

Several years after I moved to California, I was having lunch in a restaurant. I overheard from the conversation in the adjacent booth that those people were visiting relatives, and were from Springfield, so I introduced myself. Turned out that they knew my grandmother on my father’s side. She made draperies and slip-covers, and she had done their entire house.

You’re about a month ahead of me, so hopefully things are moving along much better now. This is a tough journey, but I now feel well worth it. Hope your recovery continues smoothly.
 
OK, 4 weeks today. I’ve made it to rotten, miserable is on the horizon. Then after I get through that, I (or at least my knees) should be well on the way to living happily ever-after.

This one has been very different from the first one. On this one, before I was cleared to use the cane, I was already often walking around the house with nothing, having walked away and forgotten my walker. Now, I almost never use my cane around the house, although I never leave without it. I probably will not be walking the dog for another 3 or 4 weeks. I can put a sock on and tie my shoe, and I could not do that on #1 until almost 3 months. My ROM is 3/115.

This one however, has a lot more stiffness than I remember from the first one, and a lingering and unrelenting ache radiating from the center of the knee (not too surprising huh?).

I tried abandoning the pain meds (except for Tylenol) last week, and the results were disastrous. The most sleepless and painful night so far. So I went back to taking Hydromorphone and Tylenol every 6 hours around the clock. As of today, I have cautiously eliminated the Hydromorphone from the daytime dosages. We’ll see how that goes.

There is nothing negative about this experience as compared to the first one; they’re just different. I have to be just as prepared for “whatever” as I was the first time. But even the pain that I still do have with this one is not the increasingly harsh arthritic pain I was getting so familiar with. It’s a different pain, also quite harsh and unpleasant sometimes, but it is diminishing, and I have some days, and nights, with very moderate amounts of pain.

Another interesting thing I realized. When I got up this morning, my knee ached badly. Then I realized that our barometric pressure here has been on quite a Roller-coaster the last few days. I went through that with the first one, complaining that I had never had a “weather-knee” before surgery. That’s when I realized that the first one isn’t bothering me at all. Nothing. So, there is hope that those “weather-knees” born of surgery may eventually go away. No guarantees of course, mine may even come back. But it looks promising so far.

So, onward and upward to better days.
 
Great news! It is so uplifting to hear positive news and I am happy for you AND your baby knee! I see dancing on your horizon :egypdance:
 
Discharged from Home PT just now. Official ROM 1/117. Not planning outpatient PT. I’ll just continue the exercises that seem to help the most, including of course, the ADL’s. Five week checkup next week, then I’ll start going to the gym and using the stationary bike.

I have already selected my first Waterfall hike, and put it on my calendar for early October. I’m not really being all that brave, it’s a real easy one. But, ya’ gotta start somewhere.
 
@snowdrop I’m more focused on hiking now, but my wife and I used to teach Country and Western Line dancing. We had loads of fun.
 
@Denny39 I only have a couple of minutes before dinner, but I got the biggest kick out of you reply. :) Considering this world is so small after all, did you happen to ever come across anyone with the last name of Oberbeck, Mosier, or Webb in any of the areas around Springfield? If so, you met someone I'm related to, evenif I don't know them. My mom's side is the Oberbecks, and I keep finding more and more cousins on Ancestry.com by the year!:heehee: Another weird connection----my dad was a postal carrier in Kansas City for 23+ yrs. Small world, indeed.
 
Those names are all familiar, but I don’t remember any of them specifically from the Springfield area. I was involved in a project with McDonnell-Douglas in St. Louis and worked with an Engineer with a name very similar to that, but I don’t think that quite matches. My dad was a Special Delivery carrier in Springfield. After he left the Post Office he went into property maintenance and management. My parents were managing the Battlefield Towers when he died.
 
Denny39 said:
my wife and I used to teach Country and Western Line dancing. We had loads of fun.
Click to expand...
Yahoo! I used to love to do these! It's been probably 25 years or more since I've enjoyed this dance. Where I live now, I know of no place close that does it anymore.

Dancing is such good exercise, not only for the body, but for the emotions, too. I need to get out my old Richard Simmons CD and do some dancing with him!
 
@sistersinhim It’s been about 15 years since we did that. We were living in California at the time, and we left there in 2005. A friend of mine had a Country and Western Band. They did Live performances at places like American Legion, Elks Club, sometimes Retirement or Nursing homes as well as private parties.

So we were attending one of their American Legion nights. When he offered to do requests, I asked for Johnny Cash, “A Boy Named Sue”. I was kind of being facetious, not really expecting them to be prepared for that. His response, “Great song; come on up here and let’s do it”. Quite reluctantly, I did so. After that, I began to perform with them regularly. Line dancing lessons started formally after my wife and I were asked to teach another couple some basic steps. Others joined us. Then, every other Saturday night at the American Legion, the first hour was “Line Dancing with Denver and Donna”. We did that for about 2 years. I miss that, but it’s a fond memory.
 
I really miss my dancing, too. One day, maybe...!
 
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