Back in Blue Sky Country

Well, it's another knee surgery blog post. In my defense, a lot has happened the last few days, pretty much all of it good, so it feels like time for an update. And I have some friends and family who don't use social media, so this is where I can update them.

As of 10:30 last night (Wednesday), we're back home in Butte, Montana. It was great to have the use of Mom's house during surgery and the week after, but there's no place like home.

Tuesday was the one week follow-up to get my metal staples removed, followed by a meeting with my surgeon Dr. Bruckner's PA (Physician Assistant) to review how my recovery's going and answer any questions we had.

First was the technician who removed the waterproof bandages and staples. This was the first time we had seen the incision since the surgery, and she told us that I had less bruising and swelling than she usually sees after seven days. She also mentioned that she had removed staples from several "Bruckner knees" that morning, and "the staples in them are always so tidy, the wounds look great." Nice things to hear.

Then the PA came in and examined everything closely. She had me flex and extend the joint to check my range of motion. I got to 90 degrees and 5 degrees, which is within the normal range for day 7.

We had one little wrinkle during the follow-up: I was having some chest pain. I have a lot of history with non-heart/lungs chest pain (due to a bad bicycle accident 20 years ago), and I felt pretty certain that it was just some sort of muscular pain. After the PA checked everything out she agreed that it seemed to be unrelated to my heart or lungs, and most likely pain from a strained muscle, perhaps caused by the position my arms had been clamped in during the surgery. But in an abundance of caution, since I'd just had surgery (so increased risk of blood clots) and also because we were planning to be spending the next day on the road, far from a hospital at times, she recommended that we go to the Overlake ER and have it checked out.

So that's what we did. And there went the next three hours: physical exam from the ER physician, bloodwork, EKG, X-rays, and a CT scan. When it was all done, they could say with certainty that my heart and lungs are just fine and this pain is probably nothing to worry about. One nice thing about knowing that is that I've felt free to stretch my arms and chest a lot since then, and that has reduced the pain. It's clearly just a pulled muscle or something.

When it was time to check out after they gave me a clean bill of health, the ER physician who had been attending me asked who the surgeon was for my knee replacement, and I said Dr. Bruckner. "Oh, Bruckner replaced my hip a couple of years go," he replied. Small world.

After that, we were finally ready to start packing for the trip home. We got on the road by 9AM on Wednesday, and pulled up to our house in Butte a little over 13 hours later.

Today we're settling into the routine we'll have at home for the next few weeks, which for me will be mostly about physical therapy. I have four more days of working out on my own, and then on Tuesday I'll start back up with the physical therapist I was seeing in January and February for pre-surgery PT. I'm planning to see him through mid-July, but we may extend or shorten that depending on how things are going.

I didn't have my cane with me on the Seattle trip, so today was my first chance to try walking with a cane. I suspect I'll be mostly using a cane by a week from now, but I'll let my physical therapist make the call on that.