Week 3: Slow but Sure

Week 3 has come to a close since bilateral knee replacement.  Each day has its ups and downs, its high points, and its points of discomfort.

I am learning all over again how to deeply treasure things that I take lightly on a normal day:  four hours of good, solid sleep, moving around, the ability to get into the kitchen and make coffee.  The list goes on, and on!  Right now I am relishing being able to stand without holding on to anything for short periods of time.  Before long, I will transition from the walker, but right now it is very important that I not do anything that will bring on a fall.

My physical therapist Jill continues to be wonderful although she does require me to do some things which are less than comfortable.  Each time I go, I leave exhausted but also feeling better than when I got there.

Klep is thrilled that I am more capable now of taking care of many of my basic needs.  I can now get my own clothes and dress myself.  I am also able to slip into the kitchen in the early morning while he still sleeps and make coffee.]

Yesterday was a milestone at PT.  I actually really pedaled the bike and went for over half a mile according to the dials.  That will go a long way toward getting me back to full mobility.

We also stopped at Olive Garden for a late lunch/early supper and went in, sitting in a booth for a real meal.

My bending angles on both knees excellent for this stage of recovery.  I am over 100 degrees with both.

Thank you for your prayers.  Thank you for the cards and well wishes.  I know all of this would have been easier if I had stayed on the prescription pain meds, but I so much prefer not being on them even when the discomfort gets a little difficult.  I keep remembering that old chorus, "Learning to Lean" and know that it will all pass and get better!

Week 2 of Recovery Draws to a Close

Today at physical therapy I threatened one of the workers with bodily harm when he grinned at me and said, "No pain; no gain."  I mean, no matter how right he is, there comes a point ever so often when I just want to really, really, really want all of this to get easier faster than it is going to!

Tomorrow marks the two weeks marker since surgery.  Everyone seems to be awfully, awfully pleased with the progress I am making, but when it is YOU whose every step with the walker is an effort and every exercise a pain, it is terribly, terribly, terribly hard not to put back the head and howl at the moon like an embittered wolf!

Okay, I have had my whine.  I was just supposed to feel ever so much better when the three thousand staples (a slight exaggeration, I admit!) were removed at post-op Monday afternoon.  I suppose, on some level, that I must admit that it is some better.

Over the weekend, I went off all opioids and am now relying on OTC pain control.  The negatives I was experiencing outweighed the benefits I was getting from them.  All of that is now out of my system.  My body, generally, is doing better now.  Klep is pleased that at last my nausea is gone and that I have a little more interest in food.

The bend in the knees is well ahead of what is expected at this point; I am able to totally straighten the legs.  Both of these are good, good things.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  I shall miss my sweet, sweet Karolina Kleppers, but I love them for sensing that Nana is just not quite herself this year!

Rob, Traci, and Anne will be here to help Klep deal with me!

I am so thankful that the first two weeks are behind me.  Please continue to pray for me to be able to sleep at night and to know that the dear young man is absolutely right when he encourages me to push through the pain.

I pray that your day tomorrow is filled with love and laughter, too much food, and hugs aplenty.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Journey From home to home

A week ago, we were settling into a long day.  I remember little of the ride up or the process of getting into the little short bed in the same day surgical suite where all surgery patients except emergencies pass through.  I recognized the voice of my intake med person when she first spoke as she started the process, the sister on one of church sisters.  She sounds so much like Bridgett!

After the usual, my visitors were shown in and I finally managed to get them to leave for lunch, when I transitioned to the holding pen where my doctor visited briefly before he headed off to lunch.  I was finally wheeled into the OR where we had old home week with those I knew, one a former student, one a KA brother of Kevin, and one, Aaron, the nurse who is my hero.  After the spinal, I got the stuff which changed my level of awareness to zero and spent the afternoon oblivious although, chatty, according to those others who were there.  Everything went well and I came to awareness in the recovery room. 

By the time I was wheeled up to my room in the fifth floor tower, the sun had long since left the sky.  Here, I was treated to some rubbery jelly of some ilk and some broth.  Food was not high on my priority as I entered the next phase of the journey.  It was too late to get me up.  I finally persuaded my sweet family to go home and A.J. the nurse and I began our evening.  I truly believe some people find their calling, and this young man has.  I would like to clone him.  He was not only attentive, but he listened to me and he gave good advice.  I was blessed with more good crews through Sunday.  By then we knew I would not make the departure time of Sunday afternoon because my blood pressure had a way of plummeting which was somewhat disconcerting to the pt staff……I am sure they had a horror of me, the fat old lady with the bilateral lying on the floor!  Anyway, by Sunday, sessions were getting better, blood pressure wise.

Monday I worked really hard, two hours morning and afternoon on the CPM machine which bends the need constantly as well as sessions of walking with the walker and going up and down steps.  Believe you me, I wanted to earn that trip home.  After all, Klep had installed a beautiful new handrail by the back steps and I needed to try it out!

Nurse Crotchet, finally got me rolling out in a rather non user friendly chair after I cooled my heels.  I am sure she was as glad to be rid of me as I was of her, but I do wish she had removed the IV port from my arm before I was discharged. Rob and Traci saw to my transition and trip up the steps with the lovely galvanized handrail.  I was soon chilling in my bed with the ice coolers circulating.

Tuesday I ate my one meal at the table, per doctor's instructions.  I did my exercises and walking.  Klep got me all situated and made a flying trip to Jasper to the CVS and back, tethered by the trusty cell device.  We are trying to keep to people in the house to a bare minimum.  What is a minor little bug to a healthy person is a bag deal to someone with a couple of knee replacements.  We love you all, but at a distance right now.

Body systems were finally on their way back to normal by Wednesday.  We made the first trip, bully clothed to PT.  Klep did errands while I worked with the therapist.  The time sitting upright, knees bent is difficult to say the least, but each time I do it, it will get easier.

Last night was a good night with one really long stretch of sleep.  After early morning meds, Klep even managed to have a lie in which he needed.

I am thankful for all of your prayers.  I feel the love and care of all of you.  I ask your patience as I take this time I have to do something which I find somewhat hard to do.....focus on myself and getting better.

I remember that I serve the Greatest Healer of All and that this will get better and better each day.

                                                                                                                                                

A Journey of a Different Kind

I have created a new word for what I have been doing for the last six weeks of my life: prehabilitation.  Of course this is not all I have been doing, but it has been my focus while I have been to Tennessee, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  I decided to blog about my upcoming bilateral knee replacement, but not to publish it until the day I went into the hospital.  I thought, perhaps that would be one way for me to be abstract my thinking about it instead of dealing in my imagination what it is going to be like to wake up with both of my knees forever changed and go through the pain of learning to do everything like get out of bed and get on my feet when the legs are going to be yelling, “No, no, no!  Go back to sleep and just stay there!  Dream!  But whatever you do, don’t move!”

I have not come to the decision to have both knees done at the same time easily.  In fact, I have not come to the decision to have even one of the knees done EASILY.  I have known for at least twenty years that the cartilage in the right knee was gone and I have been quite aware of the left knee now for eleven years, some days more than others.  I have pretty much had pain from them for some time, but I have lived with it, trying not to complain overly much and trying to do the same things I have always done.  Gradually, more and more things that I enjoyed doing or needed to do have been done less.  The first thing to go in 2006 was the three miles each morning on the treadmill.  Even at slow rates, I discovered after my recovery from the automobile accident of December 27, 2005, that even slow speeds on the treadmill hurt the left knee terribly.  When I went to see Dr. Aguerro with the problem, he gave me a shot of cortisone, explaining that I had probably torn the meniscus and that while I could have surgery for it that might not do away with the pain.  He also said that the pain would come and go.

At this time I already knew the right one was in bad shape and there was no quick and easy fix.  The shot helped and I got through that year in pretty good shape as I became a grandmother.  The next cortisone shot and the next spread out over a couple of years gave me a headache so severe that I said “To heck with that,” started not doing or walking as much as I would like and took the steps to my back door, one foot up and then the next, haltingly, much to my mother’s chagrin who told me that it grieved her to see me take the steps that way.  To save her feelings, in her presence, I bit my lower lip, straightened my shoulders and sucked it up.  Klep, bless him, had our steps rebuilt so that the rise was more manageable.

Last year, our trip to Ireland and England was wonderful.  We had agreed that I would do what I could comfortably before we went and I had the extra challenge of having ripped a toenail off my right foot and badly bruised my right hip in two separate freak accidents on the same day.  Once again, I made a choice to bite the bullet and keep going and I did, even the day in London when we found ourselves walking miles and doing flight after flight of stairs in the parliament building and various tube stations.  I came home with an infected toe but some good strong antibiotics cleared that up and by the bruise had started to fade from my thigh.

This year, we went on our dream river cruise on the Danube from Budapest to Bucharest.  Even though I had made peace with having a few activities that I could not do, I did not make peace with the fact that I felt I was limiting others, too.  When we got home, I knew that it was time to either know that the rest of my life was going to be severely limited in some ways or do something about it.

I had decided that I wanted to use a surgeon who had actually done someone’s knees that I knew.  Dr. Brook Bearden did the knees of one of my doctors and he had had a good recovery.  I had discussed this with him a year ago and gotten the name, but I had never followed up.  I did in late July of this year.  They had a cancellation on the 21^st of August, but that was the great eclipse.  The next appointment was September 11 and we all know what happened in Florida that day as Irma ripped up the state destroying power lines and creating havoc.  I was rescheduled for that Friday.

The appointment went well.  First I was examined by Aaron, the nurse practitioner and then both my legs were x-rayed every angle possible. Since this was not my first trip to an orthopedist, I had dressed appropriately for the occasion in a pair of white Bermuda’s, even though it was after Labor Day. (Forgive me, fashion police!)

After that, Dr. Bearden came in.  He showed me the e-rays and told me a lot of what I had known for years except now the cartilage is gone from both knees.  He also pointed out all the bone spurs, some quite spectacular in their size and we talked.  He said I was a good candidate for a bilateral if I wanted to go that way.  He went through all the pros and cons and the risks and the results that were likely.

He said that Aaron would call to get my final decision.  On Tuesday of the following week, we scheduled the surgery for November 9 at SGMC.  I went into the office on the first of November for pre-op and to the hospital the next day for the hospital pre-op.  Both appointments were sobering and picking up the walker that I will have to use during rehabilitation was even more sobering.  I was taken off all over the counter pain meds in preparation for the big day.  The week following once again convinced me that this was the right way to go.

I started my prehabilitation for the surgery when I decided to make the appointment.  I continued my pool exercises, but increased the duration of them.  I also, on the suggestion of my other doctor who has been through this, to added some muscle strengthening exercises I found on the internet .

After the appointment, during which Dr. Bearden wanted to know if I could walk a mile without getting short of breath, I decided I’d better find out.  I did.  I could.  I added that to my regimen. Each day until the pre-op appointment, I walked.

I discussed good vitamins for healing with my local pharmacist and added the ones he suggested to my regimen.  I also thought about losing ten pounds, but that did not happen!

I made the decision that I would not share this widely before the time I go into the hospital.  My decision was affirmed after I told a few close friends who were rather aghast that I would do a bilateral.  This is not something I want to do, but it is something that I feel I need to do.  With the Lord’s help, I will get through it.  I fear that if I do one at a time, the second one will never get done.  So, I press on.  I have spent some good time the last six weeks reminding myself of the promises of my God and focusing on those Bible Verses which have helped me in the past.

So later today, I will check into SGMC.  I will not take my laptop with me, so the next part of my journey will appear early next week.  I know better than to write while under the influence of strong pain meds and I plan to take what my doctor says I need!

I do ask you all to please pray for Klep as he sees me through this!