Knee replacement, Day 3 and 4

Day three. Not nearly as good as previous days. He can hardly move his leg and had to limp around with his walker, in much pain.

By end of day 3, he was having a skin allergic reaction to one ( or more) of his drugs. There are so many!

That's not even all of them.

He CAN still get up and around to use the toilet, but the opioids have taken hold of his bowels and stopped that...so he's uncomfortable.

The frequent icing seems to work, as we have removed all the outer wrappings down to the surgical dressing. No bruising yet, but I'm sure it will come. 

His leg looks nice and tan from the orange-ish disinfectant cleansing solution from surgery. It takes a few showers before that is all gone. His bandage is 8 1/2 inches long!

Morning of day 4, Friday the 22nd,  we are waiting for a call from home health and surgeon about continuing/ stopping one or more of the drugs.  On his own, Mike has decided to take ibuprofen for pain rather than opioids. It IS his drug of choice and works well. Only they told him to stop that, and put him on Eloquis for a blood thinner ( $400 co-pays on that puppy!!!) rather than baby aspirin. . . it's kind of complicated.

Last night's discomfort with the neck/upper chest rash/irritation was partially solved with a shower and Benadryl. But Thursday morning, after removing outer Ace bandages and gauze wraps meant we ADDED compression stockings. Do you know how HARD those are to get on? Can you imagine how hard that was for me to do with my weak and faulty thumbs? Ouch. Just, ouch. No more showers for him! Haha. Not really. But if it's just for soothing a rash on his upper body that he needs, I think I'll be helping with a sponge bath rather than remove and replace those ghastly things.

On a more positive note, he's discovered that Tramadol definitely does give him anxiety, so he's not taking those any more. We actually played a few hands of cards together Thursday evening to occupy his brain while that anxiety was working it's way through. And I played solitaire while waiting to rotate ice packs (which pretty much was my job all day long). I even won. Once. And I finished watching a Christmas movie with him, too, last night. He has to frequently change positions, and I'd been listening to most of it ( the movie) while I was relaxing and playing cards between ice packs, so we finished watching the movie together on the bed. That seemed an almost normal thing to do. 

Progress. Baby steps. Still hoping and praying for a good outcome overall. This afternoon the physical therapist will come to meet with Mike and we will see what THAT entails this time.

And early Friday Morning finds him walking ( for now) without walker, which means his pain is less at the moment. It changes hourly.