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I drove my car for the first time since surgery today. I was going to do it last night but I was shaky on my legs at the time I intended to do it, so I left it for today. It went well. Getting in and out of cars is an effort but not really strikingly difficult, and my reaction time seems to be up to a small jaunt. I went to the little farmer's market on the Westside, and the fancy pants butcher shop I've been meaning to check out, and to Safeway.
I came home, ate two pounds of cherries with sour cream, and slept for two and a half hours, which is good because I need all the sleep I can get. I am expecting digestive upset from the cherries and sour cream, but so it goes.
At the fancypants butcher shop I bought myself a ridiculous treat: a quarter of a pound of forty-dollar-a-pound salami with douglar fir tips. It tastes good, but not four times as good as plain salami, and it doesn't slice. It sort of mushes. The eating texture is fine, I think the reason it doesn't slice is that it hasn't been compressed enough. All these fancypants sausagemakers grind their meat kind of coarse and barely pack it in.
So: I can drive now. I don't think I can drive in heavy traffic or for long distances, even though I'mve not taken any opioids in a week (and it was almost a week before that when I took another one). I'm just low energy yet, though nothing like I was a week ago.
Nosing around online reveals that for this particular procedure it's a good thing I've had American health care. In other respects, maybe not. But in the UK, apparently they counsel patients to go for complete rest and take pain meds by the clock for a really long time and not to even start physical therapy for weeks. I think I would go bananas with that kind of regime. For one thing what pain and stiffness I have is only relieved by the gentle movement of the PT exercises I've been taught, and for another thing I have had more trouble from taking more pain meds than I need than I have had from undermedicating. I do grant that I suffered when I undermedicated too, but the point is not that I don't believe in any pain medication but that you have to use the right amount whatever it might be. But, for example, week 4 (which just ended for me), is when the UK forum for knee replacement suggests you might try walking out of the house for ten minutes with a walker. And you're still supposed to be taking the medicines by the clock. In week 2 I was walking ten minutes with a cane and transitioning from by the clock to as needed pain medication. I'm lucky, I know that, but it's the constant "don't do more than this, the worst thing you can do is overdo, if you feel any stiffness never do it again" that gets to me. And also the advice "never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down, never lie down when you can sleep." And the helplessness they encourage--right now I'm supposed to maybe help out cooking a meal but definitely not do laundry...I've been cooking for myself and doing my laundry since day 1. If you could do it in a walker, I did it.
This sounds insufferably smug, doesn't it? I'm totally failing to make my point. My point is that rest and pain medication are important, but so is doing what you actually can, whatever that might be. If your muscles are healing slower, you're not going to be doing laundry on day 1. But heel slides are not demanding, and maybe if you do a few of them off and on all day long you'll be standing for a few minutes a bit sooner? That's my real point. Not that I'm so great but that maybe it's not such great advice to tell people not to bend their legs a bit more?
I came home, ate two pounds of cherries with sour cream, and slept for two and a half hours, which is good because I need all the sleep I can get. I am expecting digestive upset from the cherries and sour cream, but so it goes.
At the fancypants butcher shop I bought myself a ridiculous treat: a quarter of a pound of forty-dollar-a-pound salami with douglar fir tips. It tastes good, but not four times as good as plain salami, and it doesn't slice. It sort of mushes. The eating texture is fine, I think the reason it doesn't slice is that it hasn't been compressed enough. All these fancypants sausagemakers grind their meat kind of coarse and barely pack it in.
So: I can drive now. I don't think I can drive in heavy traffic or for long distances, even though I'mve not taken any opioids in a week (and it was almost a week before that when I took another one). I'm just low energy yet, though nothing like I was a week ago.
Nosing around online reveals that for this particular procedure it's a good thing I've had American health care. In other respects, maybe not. But in the UK, apparently they counsel patients to go for complete rest and take pain meds by the clock for a really long time and not to even start physical therapy for weeks. I think I would go bananas with that kind of regime. For one thing what pain and stiffness I have is only relieved by the gentle movement of the PT exercises I've been taught, and for another thing I have had more trouble from taking more pain meds than I need than I have had from undermedicating. I do grant that I suffered when I undermedicated too, but the point is not that I don't believe in any pain medication but that you have to use the right amount whatever it might be. But, for example, week 4 (which just ended for me), is when the UK forum for knee replacement suggests you might try walking out of the house for ten minutes with a walker. And you're still supposed to be taking the medicines by the clock. In week 2 I was walking ten minutes with a cane and transitioning from by the clock to as needed pain medication. I'm lucky, I know that, but it's the constant "don't do more than this, the worst thing you can do is overdo, if you feel any stiffness never do it again" that gets to me. And also the advice "never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down, never lie down when you can sleep." And the helplessness they encourage--right now I'm supposed to maybe help out cooking a meal but definitely not do laundry...I've been cooking for myself and doing my laundry since day 1. If you could do it in a walker, I did it.
This sounds insufferably smug, doesn't it? I'm totally failing to make my point. My point is that rest and pain medication are important, but so is doing what you actually can, whatever that might be. If your muscles are healing slower, you're not going to be doing laundry on day 1. But heel slides are not demanding, and maybe if you do a few of them off and on all day long you'll be standing for a few minutes a bit sooner? That's my real point. Not that I'm so great but that maybe it's not such great advice to tell people not to bend their legs a bit more?