This picture shows Daisy on the lower shelf and Jelhi-Tot on the top shelf pre my hospital visit...
Hari looked after me well. Especially when I decided that I couldn't inject myself with the Dalteparin syringes on that first afternoon and every afternoon that followed for 10 days, he did them all for me without moaning or being squeamish, in fact he seemed to enjoy it!
As promised (or threatened) the 2 lovely physio boys turned up the following afternoon and I had to go through my exercises with them again as well as going up and down the stairs. We hit on a slight problem at the top of the stairs with the final (top) step as the handrail ran out before it so there was nothing to push off but between the 3 of us we came to a safe solution that we were all happy with.
A couple of days later the district nurse came and changed my dressing for me. I may have mentioned it before but I am incredibly squeamish and couldn't bring myself to change my dressings because it would have meant having to look, actually look at my scar and it resembled a bit of freshly carved up meat to me so no way could I look at it. Thank heavens for district nurses!
On my discharge letter from the hospital it stated that the staples would be coming out of my knee at my surgeons clinic on 16th April but when I rang to query the time of said appointment I discovered no appointment had been made. Soooo I had to rely on the lovely district nurses again. One of them came out the day of Maggie Thatcher's epic funeral to take my staples out which was definitely preferable to watching all the brown nosing & simpering on the telly over Maggie. My squeamishness kicked in again as she started prising the little metal staples out with a torture implement especially designed for the job and I had my eyes closed firmly and a cushion up against my face, a bit like you do (or I do) when watching a horror film! It wasn't as bad as I'd imagined it would be and it was soon over and a new dressing was put on. With squeam levels at critical I didn't move for about an hour as I had visions of the scar splitting open and bits of metal clanging to the ground.
I was visited by the physio boys once more at home and they were happy with my progress and an appointment was made for me to attend physio classes at the gym at the hospital from then on. Fancy me going in a gym! That has happened since I was at school. Lol. So far I have been to 3 sessions and have a 92 degree bend in that right knee now, although that only seems to happen when I am in the gym; at home its slightly less....
I have had one follow up appointment with the consultant and that all went well, he was happy with my progress but I see him again in 2 weeks.
Today I finally managed to get a bath! Woohooo, this may not seem like a big deal but that last soak I had in a hot bubble bath was approximately 6 weeks ago - yukkk. Since then I have been shuffling along a bath board put across our bath, my right leg jutting out over the edge of the bath, left leg bent in the bath and using a jug to douse myself in water in order to wash. Not ideal. But it would have helped had the shower worked but it didn't so that was the solution I came up with. But today I could stand bath boards and tepid water no more so bit the bullet and had a fairly swift dip in a hot bubbly bath and it was awesomeness of all kinds :) My scar seemed to look a lot better afterwards too, probably because its the first proper wash its had!
This is how it looked about 1 week ago
All these little landmarks don't really seem like a big deal, I'm sure. But considering I was in so much pain up until I had this op and wore a brace holding that leg straight since October, just to be pain free and able to move about myself is a big deal, trust me. Yesterday I even went and did some shopping in Aldi on my own, a pain free walk round a supermarket, something I haven't done for almost a year!!
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