Today, Thursday May 18, 2017 marks the 13th week after my Knee Replacement surgery. I have to admit I was a bit naive as to what to expect with my recovery. I'd previously had a hip replaced and mistakenly figured recovery would be similar. Not so.
One of my surprises was the disagreements as to how to best proceed post op to achieve a quick, successful rehab. Doctors, Nurses, Physical Therapists, fellow patients, friends...seem to contradict each other, all very confident their way is the correct way.
I'll speak of my experience and confusion. I came to the decision I needed to stop "googling" for answers because the answers, opinions, etc., always left me with more questions.
I was shocked by the amount of pain from this surgery and the efforts to control it. For pain meds I was initially given Percocet, that seemed to work ok but my blood pressure kept dropping and I became dizzy when standing. Eventually after trying something else I can't remember, I was prescribed 50 mg of Tramadol. That stopped the dizziness but did little to curb the pain. Even after leaving the Hospital I had difficulty controlling the pain, that was until I accidentally (from reading someone's story) came across a controversial, natural herb that did the trick.
The biggest confusion has been with the right way to handle Physical Therapy and rehab exercises. Even the Therapists disagree on this. Some believe the aggressive, no pain no gain approach is the best, others feel that does more harm than good and could actually impede recovery. I had four different Therapist working with me, two were "aggressive", two were "gentle". Across the Internet from what I can see, opinions are split on this. I've had lots of advice but at the time I'm writing this I'm still unsure of the best approach. One Doctor or Therapist will list the best exercises to do at home and the next will say half of them are dangerous. I've read where walking is good for you but I've also read where walking increases swelling and should be avoided during early recovery.
Then there's the icing and elevation. Sounds simple but for how long, how often? Yesterday someone who should know said I need to ice for at least an hour and repeat 4-5 times a day. I'd never heard that before, most professionals say 15-20 minutes.
For me I'm doing the gentle stretches with the occasional "nudge", I ice, elevate for about 20 minutes 4-5 times and walk about a mile every day but who knows? Only time will tell. I think most of us reach our destination in the end, the only question is, how long it took and how much difficulty we had.