Had my post-op appointment with my surgeon’s PA today. It was my very first time out of the house since my surgery. This fact sunk into my head as I hobbled out of the front door and onto the driveway to get in the car. It was exciting at first. Getting into Linda’s car quickly dashed the excitement however as it was very uncomfortable to get my right leg through the door and positioned properly for the ride. A few painful moments and overall discomfort.
Honestly I have either been in a bed, a recliner, or a couch for the past two weeks. Yeah, I get up and move around a few minutes of almost every hour, but I haven’t really done anything else. So my body was unhappy sitting in a car. It is a ~50 minute drive to the clinic in Bend from our house. We were a tiny bit late but found a close parking spot and I hobbled into the building while Linda checked me in.
They took X-rays and they look amazing. Sadly I neglected to grab a copy, but as soon as I can I will post them here alongside my pre-op ones. I hopped on the clinic scale and noted that I am down 30lbs from my pre-op appointment in February.
Yeah!
Did some range of motion and strength tests and they are very happy with my progress. I’m told I am a bit ahead of the curve overall and ready to start PT next week. However I’m still going to be using the walker for at least two weeks more.
Since we were in Bend early in the morning we stopped at McKay Cottage for breakfast. It was delicious as always. However I was regretting not taking any pain meds as the hobbling around and getting in & out of the car was wearing on me. We stopped in Tumalo on the way home as Linda’s horse is there and she had to meet the Farrier. I sat in the car with Marky the mutt (he has stayed home with us as he is 13 years old and a very mellow dog, Whereas his crazy sisters Ripley & Dottie have been with our Dog Sitter to minimize the risk of them jumping on my leg or knocking me over!)
We finally arrived home around noon and I was wiped out. Pretty much passed out in the recliner for the rest of the afternoon. Beyond trips to PT I have to avoid that amount of time in a car. Thankfully PT is only about 15 minutes away from home.
No need for a photo today, since everything looks the same. However I can certainly claim some good progress. I climbed the stairs using a cane this morning. Previously I have been going up and down the stairs on my posterior, with no weight on my affected leg. The climb on the stairs was difficult, both the lifting of my right leg, and putting some weight on it as I raised my left leg up to the next step. Both were impossible until yesterday when I started putting some weight on my “new knee” as I hobbled around the house with the walker.
My days are sort of dull, with each hour dictated by ice/compression for X minutes, moving around the rooms for 5-10 minutes, and the rest of the time spent on a couch or in a recliner with my leg elevated. Morning starts with getting up the stairs, and evening finishes with going down the stairs to bed. I sleep with a wedge pillow under my legs to keep my knee elevated at night.
I read my kindle, my phone, listen to podcasts, or music, and watch playoff hockey every evening (great series so far, even though none of my teams have been involved!)
But the moving around parts of my day have been getting more effective lately, with steady improvement in range of motion, weight bearing, and longevity.
Other progress includes shedding most of the pain meds beyond Tylenol (and a TylenolPM in the evening to help me sleep.) I am refilling the pain meds though as PT starts next week and I’m certain things are going to hurt again.
I haven’t left the house since arriving home from surgery, but Linda and I have discussed going out for dinner one of these upcoming nights. Speaking of which, my appetite has been very low since surgery, and weight loss, which I have been working on since the surgery was scheduled (because every kilogram I lose makes recovery easier!) I’m down 13kg, and feeling good.
Tomorrow is my Post-op follow up appointment with my surgeon. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Running the ice&compression machine on the knee. My walker in the background.
One week on. As I have said before very slow, but steady and perceptible progress. I’ve taken two showers. Been down and up the stairs a few times. I’m off the Oxycodone for a full 24 hours now (may get a refill however should I need it again in the future.) Opiates and I have never had a good relationship. I have a fairly strong histamine reaction to them, making me itchy and irritable. I have only ever had them for dental work and usually stopped them after a day or two. Not really possible in this scenario because this pain is a whole different level. When you think about it, someone split my joint down the middle, pried apart everything, then sawed off the bottom of my femur, the top of my tibia & fibia, drilled some holes in the remaining bone, fitted some metal into the holes, and in the process removed most of my connective tissue that actually makes knees work. So, yeah. It HURTS.
Dr. Goolsbee bought me some Benadryl to tone down the histamine reaction and I honestly welcomed the relief that the pain medication delivered. Without it I would not been able to sleep, nor get out of the chair and move around, which is essential for recovery. I transitioned off of Oxy and onto Tramadol, which is adequate, but lacks the full “sweet relief” feeling of the Oxy. I can see why people get addicted, but honestly without the “sawzall my bones” pain chasing me I don’t need the buzz.
I can move around the house using the walker. I’m not ready for a cane or crutches yet. So I’m slow and sort of useless. I can’t carry things or do any tasks while standing that require any movement beyond hands.
The ice machine is a godsend, as it carries me through from med dose to med dose in relative comfort. It is absolutely required after any of my journeys on the stairs, as I’m usually fairly tired and sore after those.
I’m feeling some progress. Slow, but steady. VERY thankful for the months of work I put in getting my body ready for this. I hit the gym two to four times a week, focus on strength training and flexibility. The payoff has been making getting up and around easier. Getting up and down to/from seated is easy using one leg and one arm only (the other hand just serves for balance.) I’ve helped others in this situation and it is no fun to watch them struggle and pull on you. Linda is a lot smaller than I so I don’t want to put her in any danger.
Speaking of Linda, having a Doctor here taking care of me has been a blessing. She has kept me on the clock for meds and whatnot, a task my drug-addled post-op brain could never perform! Given her issues (eye surgeries, aneurism stent & coil, a broken foot, and hip replacement) and my care for her during those episodes she is doing great repaying that debt.
Not much to see (yet.)
The pain has been kept under control, except for this afternoon when I, feeling great and home alone, went two hours past my dosage time and suddenly felt awful. Totally my fault. Linda left with instructions to take X at Y:o’clock and I forgot.
Range of motion is coming back slowly. Still using a walker to get around, and probably will continue until my first post-op Dr. appointment next week.
I’m on a Facebook group for TKR support and I swear the folks are a bunch of whiners. Yeah, it hurts. Taking a robotic sawzall to your bones is never going to be pain free! Lots of people clearly didn’t know what they were getting into and have just assumed it would be easy. Suck it up buttercups!
I keep having super vivid dreams about doing things that I haven’t been able to, so really looking forward to getting into physical therapy soon.
Surgery was Friday morning. They couldn’t get the spinal block to work so fell back to general anesthesia. We were home by early afternoon, and the sole challenge was getting up the stairs to the main floor. I’ve been there ever since. Friday was good. I was doing laps around the kitchen, feeling okay. Slept in a recliner with my legs elevated and in an ice/compression sleeve. Saturday was a big step back. The anesthesia wore off and I experienced severe pain and discomfort. I was under instructions to get up and move around every hour. I mostly complied but it wasn’t fun. At. All. I probably slept half the day away in a haze of pain killers. Watched some playoff hockey.
Sunday was more of the same, except towards the end of the day I noted a slight improvement in pain, especially with some of the basic exercises (ankle flex especially). The compression stockings came off. By Sunday night, watching the St. Louis v Winnipeg playoff game finishing in double overtime, I was feeling pretty good. Mobility is still difficult but my pain levels are dropping noticeably.
I don’t like taking serious painkillers for two reasons: I get a serious histamine reaction (itchy all over) and I end up having extremely vivid dreams that sometimes startle me into moving in ways that are counterproductive to healing.
Now on day three and I have relocated to a different part of the upstairs for the day. Hopefully things will continue to progress positively.
Way back in my twenties I did some damage to this part of me. Well, it wasn’t intentional, as I bent it in a direction it was never intended when two other grown men fell on top of me while we were playing a “beer league” hockey game on a Wednesday night in Seattle. I bounced up off the ice and continued to play, but the next time I went down on that knee to stop a puck I could barely get back up again. I was at the far end of the rink from the dressing rooms, but I just skated off, leaving the players shrugging and asking “WTF!?” at me as I left play. (Hockey is really dull to play without a goaltender!)
I peeled off my gear to find my right knee looking like a bruised grapefruit of unusual size. I had a few arthroscopic surgeries and a lot of rehabilitation and physical therapy over the next few years, but it has never been the same. My first doctor said that that I could continue playing hockey. A subsequent doctor told me “If you want to be able to walk when you’re an old man you should probably stop playing hockey.” That was five years after the initial injury. I quit playing, but continued being active in other ways, specifically officiating ice hockey for another decade, because I love the sport, and wanted to remain involved. Eventually I stopped working games as it kept me away from my kids too much.
I kept on skiing though. I adapted my skiing style to minimize risk to that knee. I still ski to this day, and beyond riding my bike (which I only do to keep in shape, such as it is, to continue skiing) it is my primary form of recreation and exercise.
Back in the 90s my Orthopedic surgeon suggested a total knee replacement, but stressed that the procedure was in a state of constant evolution and improvement, so probably best to just keep an eye on that progress and pick a time later in life when my original equipment is causing more problems and discomfort than a replacement surgery would. That time is now at hand. My right leg is noticeably shorter than my left, so I walk with a limp. I start each day feeling okay, but if I walk enough I end up swollen and in pain. I would like to be more active, but this knee holds me back. I often descend stairs backwards, because if I face downward while stepping down, my limited range of motion throws me off balance just as my left foot is about to touch the stair below. So carrying things down stairs is almost impossible. I have to sleep on the right side of any bed so I can hang my right heel off the edge, because I can’t straighten my right leg. If I don’t do this and I actually sleep with a straight right leg I will wake up in pain of having my bone-on-bone all night long.
Spot the difference!
I have been scheduled for this surgery a couple of times now, the first for the summer of 2020, (guess what stopped that one) and again in Colorado during our aborted relocation there. But now it is definitely happening this coming Friday.
The same surgeon that worked on Linda’s hip will be doing the surgery on my knee. I picked this date to coincide with the end of the ski season (and NHL Playoffs on the TV), but with enough recovery time for Nick & Izzy’s wedding in early July. I’ve been working out in a gym since September, with a lot of emphasis on my legs. I hope that my efforts will pay off with a swift recovery.
Dr. Goolsbee will be helping me through this recovery with her amazing patience and kindness. As soon as I am able I will update you all on progress, but I imagine my weekend and early next week will be spent in an opiate haze.
Back in June of 2000, I joined my father in his then new-to-him Jaguar XK 120 for an absolutely looney car rally called the La Carrera Nevada. The year before we had driven through Nevada on the Cannonball Classic in the E-Type. Our minds were blown on US 50, as it traversed Utah and Nevada. I became enamored with the Basin & Range country and the delightful driving to be found there. Now, twenty three years later, I am living at the far northern edge of The Great Basin and take opportunities to explore it by car whenever possible.
There is an event I like to attend in Las Vegas every June and half of its appeal to me is the chance to explore new roads in this great American outback of the basin & range country.
I had hoped to once again traverse Nevada, but this time west-to-east on US 50, and then turn south on Nevada Highway 318 (Home of the Silver State Challenge) down to Vegas. 318 is a road I have never driven, especially the section where they run the SSC.
Well, fate intervened and as I was leaving Fallon east on 50 my TPMS light on the dashboard of my 2007 M Roadster lit up. Just a week and a half ago I had finally replaced the long-dead TPMS sensors in the car and now for the third time in three days the idiot lamp had lit. The passenger side rear tire had been losing pressure ever so slowly and I would just stop and add ~5-10PSI and keep driving. But now, my brain and the light told me “get this checked you idiot. You are about to head into a vast blank spot on the map filled with empty roads and sparse cell phone coverage!”
I hung a U-turn and backtracked through the town and went to a Les Schwab tire store. They diagnosed it as a leaking valve stem. Sadly, the delay was enough to put the kibosh on my Highway 318 dreams, as I was expected at a dinner in Vegas at 8:30 pm and it was almost noon. The margin was just too thin.
If I just went south on US 95 I would be in Vegas in around five hours, but I just couldn’t bear to do that. 95 is the main route between Nevada’s two population poles of Reno and Las Vegas. It is choked with truck traffic and of course I had driven it before. I’m here to explore.
I know that if I go east on US 50 there are several possibilities of highways heading south that will get me there with some wide open horizons. I have driven several, but there may be one or two new ones. Sure enough I see Nevada 361 and check my memory about if I have driven it before. I can’t recall if I have, but it seems like a good option, so off I go.
At first the asphalt is smooth as silk, clearly repaved within the past few years. I think I see maybe four or five other vehicles. Nice road to open the taps and let the S54 pull like it was born to do. Well, at least until I get about halfway, and the road surface gets as rough as a fifteen year old boys’ pimply face. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. And then 361 ended at US 95. I resigned myself to just loping along with the traffic on 95 from here to Vegas.
One moment of amusement happens along here. There is a long line of traffic with a slow truck at the head of it. At an opportunity where I can see for miles, and a break in oncoming traffic coincides, I drop down three gears and pull a long pass. A distance behind the slow truck is a Ford Explorer in dull grey, and sporting those swivel-spotlights on it’s A-pillars that scream “COP CAR” to everyone – except me. Why? The Ford has Oregon plates, but they are just regular civilian plates, not the orange ones they put on actual state fleet vehicles. I pass it, chuckling, and have to pull in between this fake cop and the slow truck several car-lengths ahead of it as oncoming traffic has returned. Laughing to myself as I pass the truck finally I vanish over the horizon amused at the dozen vehicles stacked up behind that Ford for the next 250 miles.
Serendipity
Continuing down US95, I resign myself to just riding the cruise control to Vegas, when my phone, who I swear now reads my mind says “this alternate route will only add 16 minutes”
I look and it is a string of small Nevada, and California highways that loop south and west in opposition to 95’s east and south route. I click it, and follow these roads. They are amazing. Utterly empty and with a stunning view of a snow covered mountain range that runs along the border, but mostly in California. At the apex, it runs through an agricultural valley, but the first and third thirds are delightful rolling hills. It is a wonderful alternative to the US95 slog. Despite Siri assuming it will add time, it actually ends up saving me quite a lot of time. Near zero traffic, I just fly along with my thoughts, once again experiencing the open roads that my father and I loved so much back in 1999/2000. It is appropriate to think of those great days with my father as it was five years ago today when he died. I was with him then, and I was with him again on these roads.
Rejoining US95 I again have to deal with other vehicles sharing the road with me. Oh well. I make it to Beatty, Nevada, which is a speed trap disguised as a town. I stop at a gas station to fill up the car, have a potty break, and refill my cooler with cold caffeinated drinks. As I’m doing this, the town cop issues at least three tickets, and has yet another pulled over as I leave the town. In Beatty, 25MPH means 25MPH.
Not long after leaving Beatty, I once again pass that Oregon Ford Phoney Cop car. It must have passed me while I was filling up with gasoline. Yep Siri, I gained sixteen minutes!
The rest of the run to Vegas is uneventful, beyond one wild donkey who crossed the highway in front of me. I even pick up a “rabbit” in the form of a Mazda minivan and a Toyota Camry who want to use the long divided section of 95 to travel at autobahn pace into the city. I let them pass and then pace them, but we’ll behind, to let my Valentine1 warn me if they get painted with radar. I pull into my hotel with almost two hours to spare before the event kickoff dinner. Time enough for a quick nap, and dreams about Highway 318 on the return voyage.
