2 weeks to TKR

[Bigjay73]

Morning day 5. Don't necessarily like the feeling of full dose of pain meds and thought, since the pain tolerable, I backed off on them. I think that was a bad idea and more pain this morning than yesterday. Since I'm a side sleeper and really don't sleep well on my back, sleep hasn't been great. Can get better sleep on my side but seems to be more pain when I wake up.

When did you notice the swelling start to go down? I'm using the ice machine nearly non-stop but still seems pretty swollen and tight.

I too lived with the ice machine running. Im skeptical as to how much it actually helped, but i wasnt going to go against drs orders. Swelling went down noticeably around day 8. I feel the same crappy way on pain meds, I scaled back around day 7, off by day 11. I'm at day 21, back in the office. It's still a little swollen, hurts a bit when I stand up or try and go down stairs, but it's night and day over what it was even 4 days ago. I know everyone is different, hopefully yours gets better as quickly, or quicker than mine does, it's a real ass kicker. I will say that I'm doing less PT at home and my flexibility came back quicker than my other knee, which i really did a lot of work with. I'm not saying that cutting back on at home pt is something you should do, but maybe don't beat yourself up if you aren't doing your exercise religiously. I feel like for me, walking around as much as intelligently possible did as much as the stretching exercises.

 

[Bigjay73]

And yes, sleep was shit, but I'm now able to sleep in any position, even on my belly. But insomnia definitely comes with the surgery, I spent a lot of time watching TV between 10pm and 6 am. 2 more weeks and you'll be way closer to normal.

 

[BRI]

@Bigjay73 thanks. I really appreciate it. Good luck to you on your recovery. I’m newly retired and when I can start PT, that’ll be my only job for however long it takes.