My Recovery From Total Knee Replacement
Grueling physical therapy makes surgery seem like the easy part.
A
s a surgical nurse, I knew what to expect when I got my
knee replaced this summer. The steps, the instruments,
where the retractors would go. I knew the tourniquet
psi and that I'd be prepped from here to there. What I didn't
know was what to expect in recovery. Truth is, I never
thought much about what happened to my total knee
patients in post-op and beyond. After I
reported to the PACU nurse, I was focused
on the next patient. Here are a few high-
lights of my ongoing recovery that took
me by surprise.
• I knew that total joints didn't get
catheters anymore, but it hadn't
occurred to me that I'd have to use a
bedpan in PACU. There's no dry or dig-
nified way of doing that, and now it has
to be done. All those years of being proud to be able to work an 8-hour
shift without a pee break, right down the proverbial toilet.
• A few years ago, I couldn't even get out of bed for 24 hours after
abdominal surgery. What made my handlers think I could hoist myself
up onto a walker to stand, much less walk, on my bionic knee just a
few hours after surgery?
• Pain. OMG. I asked a few people I worked with about what to
expect. "Your pain will be surgical pain," they said, not the bone-on-
bone grinding I'd long suffered. And anesthesia would administer a
"magic cocktail" for days of post-op relief. My cocktail must have been
a Shirley Temple, because my knee wasted no time before screaming
about the foreign object that had taken up residence and the oversized
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Behind Closed Doors
Paula Watkins, RN, CNOR
• #$@&%*! Ms. Watkins battles through
another torturous physical therapy session
after her summer knee replacement surgery.