Well I got out of hospital Thursday night , was told to expect 5 days or maybe 6 but there was a problem with getting the pain control right ,
I've had chronic pain for many years and have been used to some heavy pain killers and have developed a tolerance so stuff that will put a normal person out like a light will have minimal effect on me
The opp was on Tuesday On Friday the knee swole up like a balloon and I lost most of the movement in it
They had taken out the cannula the day before so I wasn't getting the morphine any more and the pain was intense , they started trying to work out what to give me for the pain and it took a fair while to work it all out , all that time I'm doing all my exercises and walking with crutches several times a day , was able to shower by myself from the start
On the Thursday I'd come pretty close to being able to bend the knee to 90 degrees and was able to get around on the Canadian style crutches with out difficulty ,
On Friday I was only able to bend the knee to around 30 degrees , didn't get a lot better for several days
The pain made my nausea intense and they had to give medication for that and I wasn't able to eat much more than a couple of pieces of toast at each meal for 5 days
I run a fever for several days as well ,
Once they got the pain manageable they put me on a machine that worked the leg from straight to bent very slowly and the first day on the machine we got to 84* , [ 4 hours straight on the machine ] that night the knee swole up to worse than ever and the next day the doctors inspected and I could barely bend it [ it needs to bend to 90* before they will let you go home ]
Part of the problem may be because the hospital run out of ice and I couldn't keep icing the knee and also because of a series of emergencies that took the nurses away from their normal duties I wasn't able to get my main 8.00PM painkiller until 11.15 PM and my lesser 5.00pm meds until 11.00am and by then I was climbing the walls
Painkillers didn't kick in to any real degree until after 1.00AM and not a whole lot then
Old feller in the bed beside me was suffering from some degree of confusion and kept getting out of bed to use a pee bottle , unfortunately he had three cannulas in and every time he did all the alarms would go , he couldn't hear them and when he got out of bed he could no longer reach the bottle , so after he peed on the floor several times and crapped on it once , the nurse asked us to ring the buzzer when ever the alarms went off as they couldn't hear them from the nurses station on in any of the other rooms or over the old lady with dementia who kept screaming out all night that people were trying to kill her , there are normaly 4 fully trained nurses and a couple of aids on duty of a night but that night there was one fully trained nurse and a trainee , poor bloody nurse was run off his feet
This was a surgical ward in a hospital that does many more joint replacements than most , but clearly hospitals aren't a good place to catch up on your sleep
Any way the next day they put me on the machine again but had to start off with less movement than the start of the day before because of the swelling
But after 4 hours was able to get to 94* and the physiotherapist rang the doctor and he said I could go the next day , I asked if I could possibly get out that afternoon and after a bit of a chat they said yes , they needed the bed
So last night the first good nights sleep in 10 days
The doctors were very good , and the nurses were brilliant
My doctor reckons that only one in about 20 patents has any real problem with excessive swelling and I just happened to be that one in 20 although he reckoned mine was the worst he'd seen so far
I'm not in any hurray to get the right one done
David
I've had chronic pain for many years and have been used to some heavy pain killers and have developed a tolerance so stuff that will put a normal person out like a light will have minimal effect on me
The opp was on Tuesday On Friday the knee swole up like a balloon and I lost most of the movement in it
They had taken out the cannula the day before so I wasn't getting the morphine any more and the pain was intense , they started trying to work out what to give me for the pain and it took a fair while to work it all out , all that time I'm doing all my exercises and walking with crutches several times a day , was able to shower by myself from the start
On the Thursday I'd come pretty close to being able to bend the knee to 90 degrees and was able to get around on the Canadian style crutches with out difficulty ,
On Friday I was only able to bend the knee to around 30 degrees , didn't get a lot better for several days
The pain made my nausea intense and they had to give medication for that and I wasn't able to eat much more than a couple of pieces of toast at each meal for 5 days
I run a fever for several days as well ,
Once they got the pain manageable they put me on a machine that worked the leg from straight to bent very slowly and the first day on the machine we got to 84* , [ 4 hours straight on the machine ] that night the knee swole up to worse than ever and the next day the doctors inspected and I could barely bend it [ it needs to bend to 90* before they will let you go home ]
Part of the problem may be because the hospital run out of ice and I couldn't keep icing the knee and also because of a series of emergencies that took the nurses away from their normal duties I wasn't able to get my main 8.00PM painkiller until 11.15 PM and my lesser 5.00pm meds until 11.00am and by then I was climbing the walls
Painkillers didn't kick in to any real degree until after 1.00AM and not a whole lot then
Old feller in the bed beside me was suffering from some degree of confusion and kept getting out of bed to use a pee bottle , unfortunately he had three cannulas in and every time he did all the alarms would go , he couldn't hear them and when he got out of bed he could no longer reach the bottle , so after he peed on the floor several times and crapped on it once , the nurse asked us to ring the buzzer when ever the alarms went off as they couldn't hear them from the nurses station on in any of the other rooms or over the old lady with dementia who kept screaming out all night that people were trying to kill her , there are normaly 4 fully trained nurses and a couple of aids on duty of a night but that night there was one fully trained nurse and a trainee , poor bloody nurse was run off his feet
This was a surgical ward in a hospital that does many more joint replacements than most , but clearly hospitals aren't a good place to catch up on your sleep
Any way the next day they put me on the machine again but had to start off with less movement than the start of the day before because of the swelling
But after 4 hours was able to get to 94* and the physiotherapist rang the doctor and he said I could go the next day , I asked if I could possibly get out that afternoon and after a bit of a chat they said yes , they needed the bed
So last night the first good nights sleep in 10 days
The doctors were very good , and the nurses were brilliant
My doctor reckons that only one in about 20 patents has any real problem with excessive swelling and I just happened to be that one in 20 although he reckoned mine was the worst he'd seen so far
I'm not in any hurray to get the right one done
David
