Part 3 The surgery

After a few cancellations I finally got the nerve to get this going and made my surgery date for August 19 th 2014. I arrived at 5 am

 that morning

jumped into a hospital gown, then the fun began, Iv"s inserted, then they tell me I was going to get a spinal block

 and some meds of some sort to relax me, after getting that , the next thing I remember is 

being in my room with Pat and Alicia sitting there. from what i understand it was 2 hours prep and 2 hours surgery

 then 2 hours in the recovery room.

The bandages around my leg felt very tight and hurt pretty bad. as in a sore kind of hurt. I wanted the bandage off so bad.

 There was a tube just above my knee draining excess blood and another one administering numbing meds.

compression leggings on each leg that filled with air then released the air. That felt good, kinda of like an automatic exercise machine.

 but it's purpose was to prevent blood clots in my legs.

at 2;55 pm i got a shot of dilaudin, i fell asleep 15 minutes later.

in between the dilaudin every four hours, they gave me two norco;s, i am thankful. not really feeling any serious pain yet.

 just very uncomfortable.

8;30 pm i sat up and dangled my legs for 15 minutes, it felt good.They brought me dinner. They didn't want me to get up until i had 

my first therapy to learn the proper way.

 So I had to use the bedpan once. The Bathroom was only a few steps from my bed and the night nurse showed me how to stand

and get moving, i was so nervous about what pain I might feel when putting weight on my leg, to my surprise it felt good to stand,

 i was mainly a bit wobbly

from the meds.After my first walk to the toilet they brought a potty chair n said don't get up without help, but then another

 nurse told me if I think I can 

walk to the bathroom then go for it but call for help, then another nurse brought a chair and said no don't walk to the bathroom yet

 i kept them busy, i needed to pee every two hours.

Day Two: It's all like a dream, not sure how things went, each time I felt pain I'd let them know so they weren't cheap

 with the pain meds and I was thankful for that.

I had breakfast then the PT came, I have to admit, I don't know what she taught me, just to flex my feet and try to straighten 

my leg and tighten mu butt muscles. Lunch time

then PT again, she showed me how to sit up and get into the chair and sit there as long as I could take it, maybe was one hour. Dinner,

PT Again, we walked down the hall, that wore me out but no pain like before with bone on bone kinda of pain,

 just my leg was so swollen that caused my pain.As if all my leg muscles had been manipulated

and pulled at and twisted around, that's exactly what the Dr said was done in order to get to my bones.

Day Three: needed to have a group therapy , a shower then go home. it took until 5:30 before I could get that done.

Day Four:  a nurse came to visit that day. All looks good

7 Days after surgery home PT and nurse came , blood too thick so they put me on warfarin,

 that stuff worried me but i only took it for a week.

Nurse came twice a week to check my blood and PT came three times per week. I'm moving right along. 

Good advise is take pain meds one hour before PT and have Ice packs ready for when it's over you WILL Need it!!

So Just two weeks of home visits then off to outpatient PT. I had to research for my own place to go,

 one that was in network, I can't believe my DR office didn't set that up for me, they only had one place that they deal with

and it was out of my health care network. so I found a place very near to my home.

I went for evaluation and new exercises, each set progresses to something harder than before,

 I need a whole day of rest and ice and pains meds after each therapy, this is much more painful than I imagined.