Progress Progress Progress

It has been 24 days since my knee replacement surgery and I must admit-things aren’t looking quite as dire as I thought they did this time a week or a week and a half ago.

While I do still have pain, I don’t feel it necessary to heavily medicate myself and maintain a medication/pain killer schedule any more like I did previously. I very rarely use the oxycodone any  more (I haven’t used it for about 3-4 days) and I only need the morphine 3 times a day, especially when I’m doing my exercises.

I previously dreaded going to physio, as I knew I was in for some major pain and tears. Now, I do still expect pain, but I’m actually beginning to see major progress. When I went to my first physio session, the physiotherapist told me that generally, 3 months after knee replacement, the surgeon wants the patient to be able to achieve a range of motion of at least 90 degrees. I cannot recall the exact number on that first day, but I’m sure it was less than 80. Man, I definitely have some work to do.

In continuing with my one on one therapist, Alma, plenty of progress has been made. During my next physio session, I’m going to try and get Alma to take pictures of me doing my different exercises so I can post them up. After a few sessions with Alma, I had already met the 90 degree angle requirement only within a couple of weeks. After each physio session, Alma would re-measure my range of motion. Most recently, I went from (I think) 112 degrees to 126 degrees. Amazing. I simply cannot wait to be able to get back into the gym and do things I wasn’t able to do before due to discomfort.

Here is what my knee is looking like nowadays. I think I need to wear mittens while I sleep like babies do, because apparently I scratch my knee like crazy while I’m asleep/half asleep.  Well, I’m actually scratching quite a bit, likely due to the morphine. But yeah, I trimmed my nails all the way down to help minimize “damage” to my scabs and scar. It’s minimally effective ha.

The little “dots” on the sides of the long scar are the insertion points of the staples. Freaky lookin’!