Second Total Knee Replacement

[Taxman59]

On Dec 7, I had my left knee replaced. This was almost exactly 2 years after I had my right knee done. The surgery went extremely well, and (partially due to a severe snow storm expected) I was released from the hospital after 30 hours. after 10 days, I was walking with a cane (and some steps without one), and at 13 days, the staples were removed. On Dec 23rd, I was with the home health worker (she chose to come on a Sunday so she could have Christmas eve off), and had a slight misstep. I had been walking freely without aids and was progressing quite well. After that misstep, my knee swelled up, and my back started to go out. Within a week, I was unable to put weight on mu left knee, and the sciatic nerve was keeping me up at night. The outpatient PT says the more important issue is the knee, and when I say that the back prevents me from doing some of the knee exercises, she said the back will recover eventually, but the knee needs the rehab right away!

My question for those of you who have had a TKR, did the second one have more complications than the first? If so, what did you do?

(I have a cousin who had a second TKR and she had complications on the second one as well)

 

[Bamaman]

My wife had a knee replacement in June, and she's doing just great. She also has spinal stenosis and often suffers with sciatica. Her orthopedic surgeon only does knees, and he's an artist at it with a whole floor of the hospital reserved for his clinic. But he requires a 4 day stay--with 3 days with two PT's per day. He's trying to get patients to follow PT from minute one--and not procrastinate like so many do.

When doing knee surgeries, orthopedic doctors now give nerve blocks, and they most often refuse to dispense controlled pain medicines due to political reasons. They don't want to start having to answer to State Medical Boards for prescribing opioids.

I would think the Physical Therapist is right about you doing your exercises, but honestly you should be about over with the exercises in another couple of weeks.

If you are in misery and having sciatic nerve problems, you need to be under the care of a pain clinic physician--an anesthesiologist with a fellowship in pain management. He's the one that can help you with the back.

 

[Chuckanut]

Taxman59, how is it going?

 

[Taxman59]

Well, it was a really rough couple of weeks, but one morning I woke up and decided to walk to the bathroom without aides. It was slow and ugly, but I made it. That was a turning point. Two weeks of PT and more importantly moving around and I was released from PT yesterday! 3 weeks from needing a walker to being released from PT. The biggest thing was my back stopped hurting allowing me to do more walking. Now I need to build up the endurance.