Here was the plan to avoid/include scar tissue from the 50-year-old surgery. He usually just does a straight line incision from the top to the bottom (top is on the right in the photo above). But small spaces between scars, where blood supply is alread compromised, lead to tissues dying and sloughing off, so he kind of curved around the old solid scar and did the dotted line approach and included the old scar at the bottom.
When the Dr. came out to visit with me briefly after the surgery, he said, "That was a BAD knee." Duh. He found pieces of broken -off bones floating around in the knee area because it's been bone on bone for so long. There were three chunks and one was the size of a quarter. Ouch!
Below is Mike enjoying (?) some physical therapy on the day after his surgery. Pain blockers and pain pills are a beautiful thing.
Below is the view down the hall from his 4th floor room. I got to spend the night there and eat my meals there with him for Monday and most of Tuesday. In some ways I wish I would have driven home. NObody sleeps in a hospital. What was I thinking? They also have a "partners in healing" program there, so I could wear a badge and get him drinks and snacks, log stuff on a sheet, etc. Or I could choose not to. That was kind of nice.
And if you don't like gorey pictures of wounds, look no further. Home Health came by on Wednesday to change the dressing on his wound. The incision is glued shut, not stapled or stitched. He still looks kind of like Frankenstien with the stitched look. I don't know how it works.
Ice and elevation. Compression stockings. He has been quite swollen. We should have left the hospital on Tuesday with the socks, but it was forgotten. And then we forgot. But I got them on Thursday and he got them on then. VERY swollen, but that is normal.
I took this photo (above) to document his range of motion with his first physical therapy session on Thursday. He does not have much range at all. But then, he is very swollen and sore, too. Same with the photo below. I put his foot on a paper plate to help it slide more smoothly over the carpet. It will be interesting to see the difference as time goes on, as swelling dissapates and strength returns.
Below is a very swollen and bruised surgey site. His surgeon initialed the bottom of the scar, EP. Is that a common practice to "Sign off" on your work?
As I type this on Sunday June 24, he is improving each day. He can move more freely with his walker, does ask for ice treatments and help with pillow propping for elevation, eats well but not too much, as he has determined that being "morbidly obese" as his hospital charts described him, is not a good thing and he needs to drop a lot of weight and be good to his new knee. He had a novacain-type pain blocker infusion removed from his left thigh on Saturday morning and is still taking a very minimal dose of his pain relievers. He could take as prescribed, 2 five mg tablets every 4 hours. He takes about three tablets total per day and that usually helps him keep on top of things. I can see improvement is movement daily, and improvement in attitude, too. One day, he actually whistled! That was fun to hear after a long absence of that little happy sound. And like this afternoon, he just walked to the bedroom to get his phone rather than just holler and say, "Hey, can you get me my phone?" I don't think he'd actually settled into his comfy spot yet, but still! Also, he hasn't been able to get to the basement, so he's done a lot of reading and napping. The basement is where our only TV is. And Eric and I managed, with some help from two neighbors and two trips to Ace Hardware, to get our swamp cooler installed. That helped the comfort level greatly as Mike was so uncomfortable that he got a heat rash. Or maybe it was a mild reaction to pain meds. Whatever it was, he was miserable all day Wednesday till we got it done on Thursday. Whew!
He's on the mend! Hurray! One knee down, one to go.
1 comment:
Looking good on the healing. I’m glad my surgeon didn’t sugh my scar. Then again I wouldn’t have known if he had. It was in my belly button that was glued shut fir a while (long enough I don’t think I had one any longer 😁
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