Post-surgery

[unixronin]

Know what I hate more than going down relatively narrow and steep stairs on crutches?  Going down relatively narrow and steep stairs on crutches in the dark because there's a three-year-old asleep in the middle of the landing.

So, yeah, I was into surgery around 1800-1830E, and conscious again sometime around 2000-2030E.  I don't know how it went, really, except that my leg under the dressing appears to be painted pale blue and my knee hurts a lot.  I'm downstairs because between the knee pain, an infuriating endless-loop earworm, and the annoying little neurotic yappy dog next door that WILL NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP, I can't sleep.

The good news:  the post-op pain isn't really any worse than a typical Bad Knee Pain Day.

The bad news:  the post-op pain isn't really any worse than a typical Bad Knee Pain Day.  Or to put that another way, a typical Bad Knee Pain Day is as bad as immediate-post-op pain.

I just took two more Vicodin, and I'm sitting here listening to Julia Ecklar on headphones rehydrating with a can of Hansens mandarin lime soda because we're out of milk.  I also just slightly loosened the very top of the dressing (the outer wrap is one of those handy velcro-tipped Ace bandages) in the hope it'll alleviate where my thigh is hurting just above the knee.  I have a Sqush foot massager pillow on top of an upside-down wastebasket under my desk as an improvised ottoman to elevate my foot a little, but it's not very stable and not really working very well.  Getting my foot up on the desk would probably work better, but I don't think I can right now.

Comments

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

And you'd just have to have surgery every 10 years instead of several times a year.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

10 years is the expected service life of a set of artificial knees?

Actually....

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

the FDA is saying for 80% of the population the expected lifetime is 20 years.

But I forwarded you a lot of links...

http://www.celebrationjointreplacement.com/lifetime.htm
http://www.stronghealth.com/services/totaljoint/joinreplacement.cfm
http://www.stronghealth.com/services/totaljoing/kneereplacement.cfm
eOrthopod (http://www.eorthopod.com/eorthopodV2/index.php/fuseaction/topics.detail/ID/3a680c091a62a9749e0730167371c81b/TopicID/ab58fba8c039f666668d6c4886234710/area/19)
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2004/204_joints.html
http://www.harthosp.org/orthopaedics/TJR/099.htm

GAH.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

http://www.stronghealth.com/services/totaljoint/jointreplacement.cfm
http://www.stronghealth.com/services/totaljoint/kneereplacement.cfm