9. Day 3 post op

Woke up normal this morning and still feel pretty much the same, no sudden pains or aches.  My itching was a little crazy when I awoke, so I took a benedryl. Not sure if it took care of the itching, but i've napped for 4 hours so far today (in comparison to zero naps the first 2 days).  Since I can't tell if I'm itching while i'm sleeping, I guess it worked haha.

I'm being stubborn to the extent I'm trying to lift my leg in and out of bed by myself (using the leg lift rope I got from therapy, not using my muscles).  My daughter is great for the most part, but is tough to put to sleep, so last night I hobbled into her room after she was screaming for me.  Luckily she went down for a nap today pretty easily, and I fell asleep as well, so my wife was able to get a nice little break from all of us (even the hyper dog).

Today is going to be the first full day without the Oxy's, which had me worried up to this point, but so far the Hydro's are taking care of the pain.  From what I've heard from others regarding orthopedic surgery in general, as well as the post-op instructions, is don't try and ween yourself off the pain killers too soon, because once you let it get to the point where the pain hurts, its hard to bring it back down.  On the flip side, I want to get off these pill as soon as possible as to avoid any sort of dependency, so I have to be careful when I start to ween myself.   Instead of one every four hours, I'll do every 5 today,  then every 6 tomorrow.  I can always go backwards if needed.


The way I've been doing my PT at home starts with an hour or so on my CPM machine to "loosen me up."  Then I do a 1 minute walk on crutches around my small living room.  I'm careful to try and keep only 20lbs flat foot, but its hard for me gauge.  Then I do my PT which is 3 times a day and only takes about 3 or 4 minutes to do.  Then I put the ice machine on and relax.  The incision sight is still a little bruised, which it wasn't the first day, but the swelling is gone.  My hip area still feels funny to the touch but nothing horrendous.

Here's a pic of the bruising,  hopefully it starts to go away. ...

Just to update my bowel situation,  no movement yet as of 2pm.  2 more glasses of prune juice,  so between yesterday and today I think I'm up to 6 or 7 glasses... yuck!

In one of my first posts I mentioned that its a bad idea to watch youtube videos of the surgery pre-op, but I decided to pull a couple up with my wife last night.  I'm sure there is some finesse, but man, it looks rough lol.  Not only that, but I think I only understood about 2 words out of the 20 minute video, which is obviously my lack of a medical degree.