Knee replacement?

[sako751sg]

I had this operation on Thursday. The aftermath is.......challenging. The experiences described here are interesting and supportive. Thanks.

Hang in there for the first week.

Day 6 for pain was horrendous for me for some reason and a couple of friends sent some Youtube clips of two American surgeons talking through the rehab and it gave me a total reset and was way more info than i had received from our side.From that day it subsided which mentally was great.
The knee is still good to bend but you need to take it to places it probably doesn't want to go and doesn't feel safe to go.

My cold sweats lasted a good 3 weeks and the missus had to change the sheets a couple of times every night as you could have wrung them out.
Used to wake up with my leg involuntary kicking out which was excruciating and took tears to the eyes and was told that was due to cutting through a nerve and it was a horrible feeling not knowing when it would come.
A lot of your pain could be due to the torniquet which i only found out during the second week and that itself is a fair amount.

I couldn't eat for the first week and from then on i lived on fresh pasta with loads of greens,toms and peppers which they say is great for the healing process but appetite was pretty minimal.

If someone is handy then get them to help you work a bend and let them know when you say that's enough,that there is a wee bit still to go but if they don't really like you then i would say stop is stop.

I got rid of one crutch after the first week and the second after the third and probably helped things quicken but looking back i was doing things that could have went badly wrong and some nights when i got home again the pain was pretty unbearable.

Hopefully you have good folk there to help you through this as it is a trying time but think positive and know you have to work through a lot of pain and in no way i'm i saying what i did is the right way but that it did work for me.

EDIT to say,missus has reminded me that sleep was extremely minimal for the first two weeks and was the pits because it was truly the only time there was a semblance of pain relief.

 

[epogee]

One thing not already mentioned - recovery time takes longer the older you are. So someone in their 50s will recover a lot faster than someone in their 70s as bone growth slows with age. A late friend of mine had his done in his mid70s. He was anticipating a fast recovery, but sadly he was still hobbling when he died a couple of years later.

 

[bigdev]

May I ask, did you have a drain in for the first 24hrs?

Yes. had 1400 mil of fluid in my bladder so had no choice but to have the tube..lol