Ok, here is wrap on knee replacement surgery, from mu perspective, on how to hande it and recover quickly as well as on what to expect.
Day 1:: the day of surgery. let the knee rest and keep yoursef comfortabe. if that means pain medication then do so. Do try to get up and walk, even if it just to the bathroom. Very minimum every hour, wak about 5-10 minutes. more than this and the swelling will be bad and swelling means more pain.
Day 2 and 3: take your pain medicine to relieve the pain and allow yourself some relief for the pain so that you may do your exercise. It took me a coupe of days and “I can handle the pain” attitude to realize the pain medication allows you to ecercise the way you should to regain strength. Concentrate on doing this fir 2 straight days. sometimes rhe sweling and the pain will be almost unbearabe, especially at night or late evening. you will have a compression sock that i preferred to wear during the day and take off at night, when you go to bed. Do the recommended exercises ( all of them) 3-4 times per day. rest in between . Get up and walk every hour for at least 10 minutes.
Day 4: on Day 4 I had worked pretty hard and mostly rested and tried to keep the swelling down. I also tried to start with getting the flexibility back into my leg. This, to me, is the biggest challenge. You don’t want to go too far for fear of tearing it up, but you don’t want to do too little either. The more flexibility you have the easier it is to strengthen the leg and less pain. if it feels good then do some of the exercises and walk every hour.
Day 5: Star again doing the exercises 3-5 times a day. this is the day that i started feeling less pain but sometimes as much or more swelling which caused more pain. Start walking more each hour or start trying to spend more time up anyway.
Day 6: continue the routine from day 5. remember to ice the leg as much as needed to lessen the pain and test the flexibility. Remember to spend time resting also. It seemed to me on some days that by the time you did all the exercises, walked, and maybe iced the leg, It was time to start all over.
Day 7 -10: The pain has subsided substatially and I have worked more on my fexibility than anything. I stopped taking any pain medicine on Day 8 and haven’t needed any since then. To me the leg has become strong enough. (not very strong but enough). That I’ve felt adventurous enough to get out and get around to find the limitations of how long i can be out with the swelling and pain start to be a problem. It started out about an hour and i was quickly able to lengthen it to 3-4 hours. There is still substantial swelling but not bear the pain. also start trying to walk short distances without your walker and start putting pressure more on the leg. Really start into trying to get more flexibility in the leg and increase it as much as you can. Use a heating pad and it seemed to help me before and after trying to stretch.I’m not completely healed but I almost don’t use my walker at all, inside or out. I’m able to resume many chores, light ones of course. But it’s been 10 days and I’m pretty muchbwalking around without my walker. Flexibility and strength is the key from here on out. Don’t be ashamed to sity or lay around until you get this back, however while you’re doing that, you can stiil do the exercises.
I just wanted to post this to give some sort of information to those who are looking into or having this procedure done. Since there were few here that had not had it done and had little experience with it themselves, I thought i would post my DIY PT and let you know what to expect and maybe what someone elses experiences were, first hand, so that it may help some of you.
I’ll check back in soon when there is no more swelling, the leg is stronger and i am back to normal to let you know whether the work and procedure is worth having it done.
