Day 6

Argh! I just wrote an update, the phone rang, my mouse moved, I lost the update even though it was saved!

To summarize, pain continued after day one. I went up to the max oxycodone dose - three. That helped, but I was still having major muscle pain in the leg - on the inside of my thigh to the groin and in the calf. The calf pain came when I put the leg down and felt like a surging, burning, cramping, rushing of blood through the calf. Having never experienced this before, I called the nurse and she promptly sent me the 30 miles back to the ER. After a four hour visit which included getting stuck in the bathroom in a wheelchair, I had a clean bill of health and went home.

I slowly took down the oxy dose and am trying one tablet every 6 hours today. So far, so good, but I am still very inactive.

Some things that have helped me include:
1. Two knee walkers
- the one in the house is the insurance rental. It has the hard wheels that make it not good for outdoors.
-my outdoor one has big inflatable wheels (I think it is called All Terrain) and it is great for running errands, taking the dogs out down the private road we live on... Not that I have done any of those since surgery, but I did use this extensively before surgery to get around and to work. My goal today is to get the dogs out once, the big obstacles at his point are the stairs I need to get down to get outside and the fact that it is pouring rain.
2. I set up my "bedroom" downstairs by the bathroom. It is a pain sleeping on the couch, but it would be more of a pain to have to get down our narrow, steep stairs whenever I have to go potty.
3. I made a ton of frozen soup beforehand so I would have healthy options to eat.
4. Daily exercise - most done on the floor. It's stuff I have been doing for years, but any that hurt the surgery spot have been taken out.
5. PT - they really did not give me any. I am doing leg lifts from my chair whenever I think of them.

I also ordered an I Walk 2 - it is like a peg leg that you attach to your leg and walk. Ratings on Amazon were mostly good. I also saw a man using one in Costco and he said it helped him a lot. He was in a lot better shape than me, but was also older so, we'll see.

Tomorrow my mom is taking me grocery shopping. Hope it goes well. I'll bring the All Terrain knee scooter!

Pain today 2, swelling 2