I learned my lesson about overdoing it the hard way and it set me back. Tread carefully. There is a fine line that is hard to define between pushing it and overdoing it!!!! Dodie is a keener 😁 and she will figure it out 👍.
Kathleen

Insert lecture... here ...about overdoing it. That said - mom is kicking ass at this knee surgery thing.

With the shoulder injury from the car in Florida, they gave me Vicodin. But like you, it made me sick. I wanted to just throw it in the garbage, but we waited to find a pharmacy that could take and dispose of it.

We are coming to think that Dodie has two distinct pain sites - the top of the knee, which is the incision site, and the muscle underneath the knee at the top of the calf (gastrocnemius) , which may be an older problem, triggered by the surgery. She is now icing underneath too, where the makers of the ice cuff never figured they had to put cold. This is not only helping, but making me think or hope that the second one may be easier.

I think now that the Dilaudid withdrawal is over, making Dodie a lot more able to cope with the exercises. And you are right, the thought of Jessica the perceptive and gentle PT in the background is a big help.

Those drugs can be so nasty! I can't deal with Tramadol - made me so sick I had to call my doctor two days after getting home from ankle surgery. She told me to just take double doses of ibuprophin for a few days until it settled down which worked well for me. You are doing great, the two of you! And the best part is that you will have this all figured out for the next round, so the post surgery bit then will be a piece of cake! Glad you found a good physio to help you - someone who knows their stuff is worth their weight in gold!

Don't know where in the class she was, but she does have a Masters in PT.

Don't know why, but I was just thinking of the Black Knight in Monty Python. Now that guy could really cope with injury!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs

Yay! You got a PT that did not graduate in the bottom of their class!

And good on quitting the narcotics... They are really bad news.

The first 2 weeks are the worst, according to friends I know who have had replacements. It won't feel "good" for quite a long time after that, so don't despair! It will be far better, and you will be really glad it is done.

Dodie, my physiotherapist, who was young (he looked about 20 to me) said he was getting cynical because so few of his patients did the physiotherapy exercises he assigned. So I made it my personal mission to keep him from cynicism 😜. It is tough, and boring! I also found I had to find the fine line between pushing too hard, and not hard enough. So take care, do your exercises and you will be in the Alps on your bike in no time at all. Well, there is the other knee...darn. We are thinking of you in Bolzano.
Kathleen

We know it's not a laughing matter but your post, and Dodie, made us chuckle a little.

David and Maun

Hang in there!

Just remember as a current doctor friend said, "doctors are taught to make patients feel better, but therapists are taught to make patients get better." Most seem to be pretty good at it but, as an old retired doctor friend once told me "Remember 50% of all doctors graduated in the lower half of their class." And it applies to therapists as well.

You seem to be on a pretty favorable recovery, compared to folks I know with fake knees. Keep up the good work! Pain is your friend.

Dodie, you continue to amaze! What better way to get those stretches in and look forward to your future than to get on your bike! Yay!!!

Dodie - Great to see you turning those pedals! You can’t keep a good woman down for long. The Alps are over here! Keep spinning girl! K and K

Like you I quickly found that casual ice making won't do it. So I am running three trays in two freezers and stockpiling the production in buckets. This turns out to be just one of the things to keep me busy. Each thing is trivial - pull the blanket over my toes, pull it off my toes, can I see the calendar?, when is my next (name any drug)?, I have to pee - can you move that walker over 2 inches, I'm hungry; can you take away this plate?, my water is warm, etc. etc.

I realized that when you are doing things for yourself, your brain is issuing a similar constant stream of requests to your body - just think of all the moves required to make toast and butter it. But that is invisible within yourself. When you have to ask someone else for every thing, it's cumbersome.

The version of the ice cuff we got is the manual or "gravity" one. That means raising and lowering it from time to time. The motorized version might be more convenient, but on the other hand manual allows us to decide when to do it. One trick is that as the ice melts the pressure in the cuff grows, so we will empty melt water, or disconnect the cuff from the bucket. Perhaps the motor version does not have this weakness. Anyway, ice has helped a lot!

Hi Steve and Dodie,
Judging by the smile on Dodie's face its both welcome and relatively painless exercise. Bravo! Its still a bit of a road ahead, but glad you are on the way.
Cheers,
Keith

Maun was very glad to see the ice machine. Nobody had mentioned ice yet and she was worried. Ice and elevate was her mantra. Keeping it full was my job. Our refrigerator couldn't keep up with it so I had to go buy ice. Keeping it going kept me busy.

Looks like things are on track, great.

David and Maun

Hooray!!!