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TKR The adventure begins

Sorry to hear about your fall. Isn't that so like us post TKRers to worry about the knee rather than the rest of us? :heehee:
It sounds like down stairs is coming along fine. Just keep trying a little bit each day and pretty soon you'll find it's getting better and better. It will just naturally happen. But "down" is usually the last "victory." :)
 
This has been an odd week. The knee has not been too painful but there has always been a bit of residual discomfort here and there. Lately it seems to be morphing into somthing else. It's kind of hard to describe. Not pain. Kind of like how when your foot falls asleep and then it starts to wear off and it's a kind of tingly numb feeling. It's a mild version of that with the occasional zinger thrown in. Im telling myself is a good thing and it means nerves are growing back and maybe it will come out of this without the mild residual discomfort. But I have no idea if that is right or not. Anyone else have anything like this? The zingers aren't new but the numb tingly stuff is. I've got the typical numb patch below the knee on the outside that I've had since the first week, but this is centered on the knee itself and just above it and feels different. More active somehow. Not painful, just kind of weird.
 
Phew, thank goodness your knee and the rest of you handled that fall so well! I suspect falling is pretty much everyone's worst nightmare post-tkr, but at least yours was preceded by a mammoth shopping expedition that was really one for the books!

Your recovery continues to amaze me. It's truly Rock Star quality, filled with energy and only very minor complaints at just 14 weeks. Whatever you're doing, it's certainly working for you! Rock on @Jajakio!:wowspring:
 
I've had those tingly sensations in the quad and on the medial side of my knee on and off, but thankfully, it never remained. If it had continued, I would have called my OS, but as I said, these were brief visitations, like so many of the bizarre sensations we experience during this recovery. Sometimes it would last a full day and be gone in the morning, other times, just a few hours.
 
I'm no expert, but I had the increased tingly sensations off and on for a while, and it seemed very plausible that the nerves were making themselves known as they did their regenerating thing. It's irritating, though, these up and down hills of discomfort that come and go. At about your number of weeks, I kept looking at the chart about the different layers of healing that have to occur, and at about what time in. So I'm pretty sure I was dealing with something similar, and probably with bad grace! Hang in there!
 
Thanks, @Polkadot. This recovery has been full of weird little sensations and odd temporary pains. After reading on here, I suspect that's pretty normal. I truly appreciate this site. So many different recovery stories and lots of things no one else ever tells you to expect.
 
It is good when someone has a complaint and others check in to say they've had something similar. The doc can say something is normal, but when five normal people say they've done this, well...it helps.
 
Very few OSs and PT had actually had a knee replacement. We have, and we all have experience in this recovery! Ask something, and I bet someone will have an answer for you!
 
That was the best part of reading recovery threads before my surgery: when something happened or felt strange, I could just say "Okay. I read about this!" It certainly made for less worrying about the many things that can happen after TKR.
 
I agree with SuzieShoes. I joined this site 6 months before my tkr. It helped so much when the strange, new feelings popped up. It's nice to know what's normal and what's not!
 
After I found Bonesmart and before I joined, I would google my question and then add TKR Bonesmart and it would bring me here to someone who had that issue, often dated several years ago. It helped me a lot!
 
15 weeks

I'm pretty much achieving what needs to be done in a normal day. The discomfort isn't gone entirely but it's pretty minimal. I can walk a mile or so but have put off trying long hikes yet. We planned to go hiking the other week but I had to take the kid to urgent care for strep throat instead. I decorated my 250 cupcakes today and they are sitting on my bar with the icing drying a dab before I pack them up for tomorrow. Im doing the small 2 tier cake tomorrow morning. It's baked but not decorated. I need a good night's sleep before attempting that. Wedding is not until 4 pm so I should have enough time. Im grateful the recovery is coming along well enough to attempt a few extras. It is 8 pm. I had a full day and I'm moderately tired but not aching.
 
Wow it's been a frantic week! I did the 250 cupcake decorating last Friday. Saturday I decorated the small wedding cake in the morning and went to the wedding in the evening. Things went well and my dear friend loved the cake and cupcakes. I even danced a little. I was tired and spent most of Sunday laying around for a well deserved rest. My knee held up well but my back needed a day off. My knee was just slightly swollen saturday night and I did ice for a short while when I got home, more as a precautionary measure than from any real pain. No swelling at all on Sunday morning.

Monday I did an appraisal on a small farm. First time I've done a farm since the surgery. I'm getting to be an old lady mentally and I don't like it. I was down in the back field seeing the horse barn and walking the back 40, and I kept thinking what if I fall on the rough ground out here. I was all alone but I did fine. I just felt like a worry wart. I was tired that evening but no swelling. Yesterday was worse. I had a large report to get in and computer issues all day and I didn't finish until nearly 10 pm. Probably 12 hours sitting in front of computer with only short break and an hour or so off for dinner. That caused more problems than all my walking. I really should not have sat that much. Knee was swollen yesterday a little and still is a touch swollen this morning. Mild discomfort but more than usual. Today is my off day and I plan to just putz around a bit and pick up the house. Take it easy on the knee. Maybe take a short walk outside since the weather is nice.

I'm truly grateful I had this surgery done. I am not completely pain free by any means but I can get through the day. I dont need any kind of pain meds most days. I have no idea what ROM is but good enough for most of what I need to do. Going down stairs is about the only issue left. I go up and down as much as I need to but still have trouble going down foot over foot. Wonder if some of that is due to other knee which will probably need surgery eventually. It is not too painful at present, just the occasional twinge so I'm putting it off a while but eventually I will probably need it done. Just hoping to have the operated one totally normal first.
 
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Whew! Glad you took that rest on Sunday. Monday sounded like a challenge! As my knee gets better, and I'm more active, my back has been giving me some pain, too. This is a very old injury site from my 20s, so I'm well acquainted with it. Sitting and standing still always seem to aggravate it. I've been working on an editing job lately, so have been sitting at the computer for long days--and I had forgotten, but it's a killer. I hope your short walk works out some of your kinks!

I've been struggling with that "old lady" feeling, too. I'll just build on something I just said on another thread: For years my body performed ably, and I mostly ignored it. I get irritated that it needs attention and care now. I think that in my mind, taking my good health for granted was a "youthful" thing, and having to make extra doctor visits, to rest and heal, to think before I step, are "old-age" things.

How can we turn that around? Whether we are 50 or 100, we don't really age inside. (Have you ever noticed that?) Refusing the limitations, as you have done, with your 250 cupcakes, is a good start. However, I suspect that our notions of what it means to be "young" or "old" need an overhaul--at least mine do. In the meantime, I keep remembering my dad, who after about the age of 50 had lots of arthritis in his joints. He used to make a visual joke of getting up from a sofa, and he was such a joker anyway that we really didn't realize the pain and difficulty he had. He always seemed young to me, because his attitude toward life had a real joie de vivre.
Or "joke de viper," as my spell check kept changing that last phrase to.

I imagine the wedding and cake items were lovely! What a good friend you are.
 
I think you are right@polkadot. I think most of us ignore our body when things are going okay. I was always healthy and never thought much about it. Didn't go to the doctor for years at a time. Got overweight which probably contributed to the knee problems. Now I'm having to rethink a lot of things including the importance of eating right. I lost 40 pounds before surgery and now it's creeping back on. Now that the wedding cake is done, no more sugar for a while. I need to get this under control.

I come from a long lived family who aged well. My grandmother and her 5 sisters all lived into their 90s and all lived at home and in reasonably good health until the end. They helped shape my attitudes about aging and staying active. My grandmother was gardening until the last 5 years or so. She died a couple of weeks before her 98th birthday. She lived alone, still enjoyed cooking and got a little help with the cleaning. Even in the last year, I could still stop in and invite her out to lunch with me. She was a bit slow and arthritic but she always went. I hope I age as well as she did.
 
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We can all hope to age well. There’s the old saying that youth is wasted on the young, because they don’t appreciate what they have. I think as we get older we appreciate good health so much more, even if we have to work at it. Getting new knees, for example: I feel ten years younger, at least. Maybe twenty. It really opens the eyes to what I had, for many years, been willing to give up.
 
Here's to more "joke de viper" for all of us. :rotfl: I, too, have taken relatively good health for granted and am not near ready to have to start dealing with the physical accompaniments to aging. :blackcloud:Currently my knees ("knew" one included) make me feel old but I'm hoping at some point they will feel more youthful like @SusieShoes. Congrats on getting the cupcakes and wedding cake finished - and cheers for lots of dancing in our future . . . . :cheers:
 
I totally agree with the ladies above. My kids always kid me that I will never grow up but sometimes I feel like my body is pulling a cruel joke on me! I remember my Dad looking in the mirror when he was in his 80's but from his comments, the reflection he saw was a young fella in his 20's or 30's - all handsome and fun. That's what we all need to do. Because that reflection is who we truly are at heart!
Fortunately our new knees may give us a whole new perspective. At 20 we thought 40 was old. Now 75 is merely middle aged! Life is getting significantly better as our knees get stronger!
 
Week 16

Well I learned somthing this last week. I have been getting around well on my active days but due to poor planning and trying to fit in too many other things, I was left with too much to get done in one day and I pulled a super long day on the computer and paid for it. Just post surgery I had to be careful how long I sat with knees down. At 4 weeks 15 or 20 minutes sitting at my desk was all that I could do before it got painful. I hadn't worried much about that in the last few weeks and thought that part of recovery was over. It wasn't. I did a 11 or 12 hour day on the computer with only short breaks and when I quit at 10 pm my knee was aching. I seldom ice any more but I did that night. It swelled overnight and stayed somewhat swollen for 3 days. I learned my lesson. I am not all better yet.

On the plus side, my back is settling down and my energy level is improving. The knee isnt any worse than mildly uncomfortable and sometimes doesn't hurt at all. ROM is just about even with my non operated knee and new knee has only very slight stiffness left. Hardly enough to be a bother. I can managed a full 10 or 12 hour day of normal activity including walking and stairs. Form of foot over foot isn't always perfect especially going down stairs but I don't dread stairs any more.
 
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