Day 16 Partial (Medial) right knee replacement

TL;DR Pleasantly surprised so far! Do your pre-hab, ice and elevate, try Journavyx instead of Oxy ($30 at Costco Pharmacy), sit your butt down when you’re peeing early on so you don’t faint.

I figure this subreddit has a huge selection bias— if you had a great recovery, you’re probably less likely to post about it online. So here’s my stab at positivity (with some bumps in the road):

54M, degenerative meniscus damage in the medial compartment. Cortisone helped for a bit, none of the other injections did. Suffered with it for 16 months but took to hear how many people on this sub said “I wish I did it sooner”.

Post-op, I had an On-Q Pain pump for 4ish days and stuck with tylenol and Journavyx. I had a bottle of Oxy, but never touched it.

The first few days SUCKED. Walking with pain with a walker, constant 20min on 20min off icing with the cryotherapy machine, elevation, boredom. Tough to sleep in any position but my back.

On day 3 I passed out peeing…. Apparently that’s not terribly uncommon— I fell from standing into the bathrom and hit my back on the spout. Got a pretty deep bruise but didn’t hit my head or knee (yay). Went to the ER, battery of tests, all were fine.Lesson: hydrate and get up slow, especially in the AM. There’s a blood flow reflex when you pee that makes peeing a little riskier than you might imagine.

On day 5, tried to remove the On-Q Pain pump catheter in my thigh and… it got stuck. They have a hotline, and the nurse suggested a warm compress (sometimes they use a little glue to make sure it stays put). No compressing helped, so had to drive to the anesthesiologist the next day. Nurse couldn’t get it out, so the doc came in and used what a technique I would call “pulling really hard on it”. Turns out there was a god damn knot in the tubing under the skin!

Day 6, graduated to crutches.

Day 8, walking unassisted.

Good flexion and extension so far, but it’s slow going— feels like I’m wearing a too-tight knee brace.

Day 14, they removed staples (gross) and x-rayed— they seemed happy with progress.

Day 15, PT cleared me to drive! Yay!

Today I can BARELY do stairs normally versus 1 at a time.

As of now, there’s almost no pain in the knee. As the nerves heal, the whole shin area is hypersensitive— feels like a cross between funny-bone tingles, a sunburn, and 3 day old bee stings… That’s improving slowly.

PT only hurts a tiny bit. I’ve got enough flex to read an exercise bike.

Good luck, y’all— you got this!