At 6am, the day after total knee replacement surgery, I am visited by the pain management staff. They tell me that they will remove the epidural, but ask if I want one final long lasting injection of morphine that will get me to noon. I ask whether it will cause me to feel nauseous and groggy. She says yes, but adds that most patients request it to avoid pain. I choose the road most traveled. She applies the morphine, and then removes the epidural. Removing the epidural involves removing considerable tape from my lower back which hurts as she removes it. Any hair on my lower back was removed. The doctor and I share a laugh noting the scene from the movie, "40 Year Old Virgin", where chest hair is removed with wax and tape.
I continue to be visited by nurses every 2 - 4 hours for BP check, temp, etc. I continue to be given a battery of pills. At 10am, I visited by the PT staff. They ask me to sit up in bed. They help me to move my surgical leg to the floor. They ask if I feel dizzy. I answer that I do. We wait a few minutes. After this, they help me out of bed to stand with a walker. They detach the IV and oxygyn, but attach the urinal bag to the walker. Yes, I am wearing a catheter (argh!) so that urine is automatically siphoned from my body. The PT person asks me to take a few steps which I do with the walker. I barely put any weight on my right leg. Pain was less the issue,as intense pressure bothered me most. I could hardly bend my leg at the knee. I walked to the door of my room and back to my bed aided by the walker. The PT person was satisified, and said he would visit with me later in the afternoon. I mentioned to the PT staff that my challenge when returning home was to navigate 13 steps in my house to the bedroom. He noted this and asked if I had family who would be available to me when at home. I replied that my wife and sons would help me. He noted that many patients often went to an extended care facility after total knee replacement surgery. He cautioned me not to underestitmate the convalescence time and care needed for total knee replacement. He emphasized the knee replacement was "major surgery", not a mere arthroscope.
At 8am on Thursday, I was visited by one of the surgical staff who removed the bandage from the knee. The 6 inch incision was very clean without sutures. The skin on the outer surface was glued together. Sutures were used for the deeper layers. He also removed the drain plug from the surgical site that was 3 inches below the incision. The drain was used to remove blood that collected at the site after surgery. I think they emptied that drain bag 4 to 5 times. Each bag, in my mind, seemed to be the typical amount that one donates to the Red Cross. I privately wondered if I had lost too much blood.
At 10:30am, I again threw up. I was still feeling groggy and nauseous. The nausea feeling lasted up until noon when the morphine wore off. As the morphine wore off, I became more aware of the pain. On a scale of 1 to 10, the pain level was at about a 4. But Ifelt much much better.
In place of morphine they asked which narcotic I would like for pain management. I indicated that I once had vicadin. They told me that vicadin was not stong enough. They suggested Norco, and I accepted. But I added that I was not a big fan of drugs to control pain, and would prefer conservative methods for pain management. They acknowledged this, but still gave me a Norco tablet which also had some Tylenol.
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