OT- Knee Replacement Update

Well - we just got back home from Des Moines! Everything went well! I have SOME pain, but not near as much as I thought I would, I can bend the new knee over 90% in and to about 5% of flat. I have my first PT in the local hospital on Monday morning, so will need to keep up with the exercises over the weekend. It is sure NICE to be home! The car ride back (2 hours) was WAY more comfortable that the hospital bed!

are you on a machine that repeatedly bends your leg up to 120 degrees? I was on one for 2 2hr sessions each day for 2 weeks

They had me on that the first couple of days. I went over 95 degrees, so they said I didn't need it anymore....

Glad to hear it turned out well. Your experience with the pain mirrors mine. Your flexibility at this stage mirrors my experience also. I've had two shoulder surgeries and the knee replacement was a piece of cake compared to shoulders. I was back to cutting firewood on an every other day basis at eight weeks after the replacement. The thing would get tooth-achy on me the next spring while crawling through the snow gathering sap, but nothing a couple of Ibuprofen wouldn't keep under control. By the year point that had gone away, too. The biggest drawback is that crawling on your hands and knees on hard surfaces (concrete, etc) is not fun. I simply bought a pair of el-cheapo knee pads. There are a couple of weird things to get used to. The silly thing makes some goofy clicking noises every now and then. My wife heard it once and it made her skin crawl. Lol! Doc said that is perfectly normal. Also, there is no feeling in the replacement joint. You have feeling in the skin over the knee, but you have this dead spot where the original knee used to be that is completely free of any sensation. The positive side of which is you can take a blow to the knee that would normally put you on the ground with tears in your eyes and just shrug it off like nothing happened.

Glad to hear your replacement is going well. I had one done 6 weeks ago, knee is still swellen, hot

and very stiff. Most of the time it is so swellen that I can only bend it 105 degrees. Doctor says

the stiffness will not go away until the swelling goes down. I can not take any meds for the swelling

because I am taking Plavix. Dr. says it may take another 6 weeks before the knee gets better. I use

ice all the time to try to kool the knee down but in about 20 minutes its hot again.

(quoted from post at 19:31:02 11/19/15) The silly thing makes some goofy clicking noises every now and then. My wife heard it once and it made her skin crawl. .

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Didn't your replacements come with grease zerks? Couple of pumps will grease those right up. Got to keep up on your maintenance.

Grouse

Thats good news. I know you will do the therapy. Sometimes the recovery time depends on how bad the knee was before surgery. When I was getting a lubricant shot in my knee I joked about getting a grease needle from the farm store and greasing it myself. I got NO response from the orthopedist. I had the feeling I wasn't the first patient to make that suggestion. LOL.