Physiotherapy "in absentia"!!

Back to the diary - since it took them till the next day to get a decent sized chair, I was able to remain on the bed! Utter luxury! The bed was one of those adjustable ones so I could raise and lower legs as well as the head end. Sit up for food, lay back for a nap, half way to watch the telly! All good stuff!


THE AIRCAST CRYO-CUFF

They brought me one of these gizmos that I mentioned earlier. It was a God-send! I had no idea how wonderful it would be. Refills of ice could be obtained on demand and I was left to use it as often and for as long as I wanted. Only the physiotherapist said something about not supposing to use to for more than 15 minutes at a time. Since I had already been using it a lot, lot longer periods than that, I just nodded agreeably and ignored her! WHY do people have this unending desire to try and limit people's ability to manage their own pain?!!

I was also got out of bed and taken for a walk down the corridor on a walker. I say walk, but it was barely 20 feet and back. I was duly applauded for my magnificent achievement and put back on the bed again! End of physio! Oh wow! Is that all there is to it? Pushover!


Around this time, it became apparent that the codeine phosphate and paracetamol cocktail was insufficient to control my pain. So without further ado, the sister decided to change it to Tramadol which was fantastic! I was written up for 100mgs 4hrly and though I did try to manage with 50mgs, since she said I could always have the other one when I wanted, we agreed in the end that it should be 100mgs plus to 1G of paracetamol. With the ice, that was a good arsenal for most of the pain.


DO IT YOURSELF PHYSIOTHERAPY

The exercises I needed do were

anti-DVT
ankle pumps which is waggling your feet up and down and making circles with them
clenching the calf muscles
changing the position of the legs frequwntly so the calves don't get and stay, compressed

general exercising
clench thigh muscles front and rear
clench buttock muscles
keeping the knee straight, lift the leg up off the bed and slowly raise it to about 20 inches high. Keep it there for some seconds and then slowly lower it again
And the coup de gras was to pull my foot up as near to my behind as I could!

At first, with the inevitable swelling that always follows any knee surgery - actually, blame the tourniquet for most of that! - flexion is always going to be a problem in the early days. So I contented myself with just doing as much as I could. I found when I got up in the morning, when the swelling was at its minimum, I could achieve pretty good flexion, at least 90 degree at a guess. It was sore to do, the wound felt like it was going to burst open like a split banana! but I knew that was unlikely as long as I kept at it gently, so I persisted. 'Sir' was extremely pleased when he called.

The larger chair finally arrived and now I could get myself organised into a routine. From day 2 I was getting myself up in the morning, washing and dressing. Breakfast was presented around 7.30 and then there would be the usual activity of bed making and cleaning. Clean sheets every day! That's a nice change!