Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Knee Replacement Surgery

Today was the big day. We arose early to get to the correct hospital for my wife to get her knee replacement done. We had had our nerves a few days ago and by today we were sort of resigned to doing this. (mostly her).

For me, it's mostly about doing both her jobs and mine and organizing my two daughters to help when I need them too. One just graduated high school and I'm not sure how helpful she will be. But, my older daughter now 25 is down from Oregon where she lives taking a language intensive at a college nearby this summer so she is staying with us for 2 months while she does that. Since we have a guest bedroom that works out fine. She is more a natural healer like me at this point (though the other one has these abilities too but likely hasn't been open to using them in ways I can recognize yet.

For example, I discovered that my 18 year old daughter like my wife is a "Natural Intuitive". How I would define that is someone who automatically does the best thing for the most amount of people without really understanding why or how.

I hadn't seen it in action before so I was really taken by surprise. We were supposed to go to Washington last weekend for an orientation at my daughter's college. But, she realized as we were driving to the airport that we didn't need to go now and she didn't want to go either. I had realized we mostly were going so my wife didn't have to think about her upcoming surgery. So, as my daughter wouldn't give up (for about an hour and a half about not wanting to go I realized even though she might think she was being selfish I realized fully for all of us not going was a better choice. Finally, my wife just gave up and when she called we didn't lose any money at all except driving to the airport because our tickets became open tickets and we changed our hotel reservations to late July instead in Washington.

We got to the right hospital with ten minutes to spare (which was surprising because the traffic wasn't as bad as I had expected. Then we had to figure out which building we were supposed to go to and then figure out which parking lot was the one we should park in. Since it is a large hospital with multiple buildings this took some time. But, finding it and getting there was pretty easy because my wife had had a boyfriend in this area before we met in 1994.

So, they gave her a really nice room with a view while two different nurses came to check her in. Then I realized I had eaten so early that I was going to have likely low blood sugar about the time the doctor came to tell me how she was doing. So, I realized I had to find some food in the interim. So, I went searching for the hospital cafeteria. When I finally found it (this took some time because I wasn't familiar with the layout I realized there weren't many choices yet because it was too early in the morning. I asked an attendant if I could get some cheese but he said that that area was for service workers to make sandwiches for people during lunch which was a while away. So, I simply had to make do with what I could find there. When I got back to my wife's hospital room they were gone and I was a little worried that I couldn't be with her for moral support while they put in an IV because she doesn't like needles. So, I finally met a doctor because I was introduced by a nurse that showed me where to find my wife. They hadn't put in the IV needle yet so I could sort of hold her hand through that. However, they decided not to have me there for putting in the spinal block. I was moved to the family waiting room in another building. The surgeon just came into the waiting room to tell a lady her husband's knee surgery was done. So, I guess my wife is next in line.

Then at 12:30 during lunch time my wife's knee replacement specialist came in and told me it was all done and that she should be in recovery for about 1 1/2 hours. However, it was much longer than that before I saw her so I got a little worried at how long this was taking.

When I saw her finally at about 4:30 or 5 pm after checking her in at 9 am the previous morning after getting up at 6 am and driving there on busy freeways through the San Francisco area I was pretty tired because neither of us could get to sleep until about 1 am the night before and I'm 66. So, this was a little difficult waiting and not falling asleep in the hospital room. So, I checked into my hotel when I found out it was going to be at least 4 or 4:30 when I could see her. I went to my hotel and took a shower trying to wake up enough to function. She seemed okay.

I was pretty amazed at all the technology surrounding her. First, they were draining the incision area and then refiltering her blood from the ooze coming out to reprocess it and then give it back to her later through a machine that filters blood automatically. Then you can dispense it directly into plastic bags to put it back into the patient it came out of through an IV. I thought this technology was quite remarkable.

Then they had this thing wrapped around her knee that had been operated on that would inflate with air to move the knee and leg to keep movement in it while it healed. Then she had a device to inhale into to keep her from getting pneumonia while laid up in bed for a few days.

On top of this they left her epidural in so they could continue an epidural drip to ease the pain. Then, at a certain point she suddenly realized the pain was more than she could bare because she forgot to push a button to dispense more pain meds into her IV. Then a nurse came in and asked her if she wanted a perkaset.

 

Perkaset (Percocet) Information from Drugs.com

www.drugs.com › Misspellings
Perkaset is a common misspelling of Percocet. Perkaset contains acetaminophen and oxycodone and is an analgesic used to treat moderate to moderately ...
 
She said okay and the combination of pushing the button and getting an oral perkaset made the pain bearable.
 
This doctor has his patients beginning to walk on the 2nd day. He is world famous for his methods which allow people to be functional much sooner than most.
 
We both were pretty tired from this day being stressful in many different ways so eventually I couldn't keep my eyes open and went back to the hotel.

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