One Month Post Surgery

12/28/2010 I had both knees replaced with Zimmer NextGen Patient Specific Implants.  The surgery was mechanically no problem - they were done with me in less than two hours.  My last memory pre-surgery was the nurse sinking the plunger on the syringe on my IV as I was getting the spinal.  Next thing I knew I was laying in a bed with legs that had 23 and 30 staples in them.  I am glad I missed out on the cutting, drilling, sawing, screwing and pounding my bones and soft tissues endured during those 2 hours.  However, even though I was not aware of all that trauma, my legs were, and they reacted by swelling up like crazy.


I stayed at St Peter's in Albany for 3 days and then I was transported by ambulance to Sunnyview Hospital in Schenectady for in-patient Physical Therapy.  I weighed 179 before surgery.  At admittance to Sunnyview I weighed 197 pounds - all the fluid retention!  The stay at St. Peter's is a blur of a memory - I had a morphine pump that I could activated every 20 minutes to control the pain.  However, one of the other drugs in that mix caused me to have an allergic reaction and my blood pressure dropped to 76/50 and I had to get two units of blood.  Once they had my blood pressure up, they sent me to Sunnyview.


The first couple of days at Sunnyview were rough as we struggled to get the pain meds right.  After the third day I was more able to be comfortable and started to enjoy the PT.  Lori, my PT, liked my aggressiveness and we pushed pretty hard at getting the knees to flex and extend.  By the 5th day I was able to move around the room with a walker; then rapidly was released to walk with a cane around the halls.  One of the memories I will take with me from my stay there was seeing some of the children in the brain and spinal injury area - very sobering and emotional to see what some families have to cope with.


I was released after 7 days at Sunnyview and the ride home with Donna and Alix was in a snow storm.  It took awhile to get the pain med Rx filled, but we finally got home - it took a toll on me.  I needed the cane to get around and was on heavy narcotics the first two weeks.  As the bone and surgical pain waned, I was able to back off on the narcs and start using just ibuprofen. However, I caught a cold  (from the PT the first day of out-patient PT, I think).  So my third week was ruined by the weakness I had from fighting the cold and getting my legs to heal.  Energetically each leg is burning 1000 calories a day, just to repair and heal.  Fighting the cold was then added to that.  I now weigh about 170, so have lost about 9 pounds from pre-surgery weight, which is not what I wanted.  I slept a lot.  I did make it to PT, but was really wiped out all other times.  As it turns out, that may have been a good thing because when I felt good I overdid things and then had to recover. 

This week, the cold is over and I felt fantastic on Tuesday.  I  drove for the first time to PT.  So at PT I really overdid it and paid the price on Wednesday.  On Thursday, I learned the lesson and backed off, so today I feel really good.  The soft tissues (muscles, tendons, ligaments) all need to adjust to my new knees and the new alignment of my legs.  IT band tightness, muscle soreness, and the start of Plantar faciatis in my left foot are now challenges.  These will be overcome and I really feel I am making progress physically and mentally now.  I am able to walk freely around the house and today I fixed the vacuum system and vacuumed the house. 

Donna has been saddled with all the work of blowing snow during these storms and keeping up with stoking the outside wood furnace, at the same time working her job and taking care of the chickens, dogs, cats, rabbits, oh yeah and me.