A dam strange week!

3 December 2016: One month post op Left knee replacement and ten months post op Right knee replacement

Here in New Zealand it is late spring/ early summer. A time when the temperatures are increasing but the weather is quite temperamental and we can get horrendous winds for a week at a time (100-140km an hour).

In addition to the changeable weather, my post op recovery has had a bit of a mixed report for the last week. Monday I woke up feeling invincible - and ready to go forth and walk long distances. However, our dog Lewis had to be taken to the vet as he had got grass seeds in his eye and foot and he had to have them surgically removed. It was a wild day with gale force winds. After dropping the dog in for surgery, I was getting into the car (rather awkwardly - with my leg balanced against the door for support) when a violent gust of wind hit the door  and concertina-ed my leg into a tight bend. Not an ideal position and it hurt like crazy.  So I didn't feel invincible for long and spent much of the next few days sitting around with ice on my leg trying to get it back to its feel-good state. Lewis recovers much faster than me and he was ready to get up to mischief by Tuesday!!

By Wednesday I was beginning to feel much better and I decided to go for a walk down our drive to our dam. It is about 500m away. When I had my right knee surgery I wasn't able to walk down there until after the fifth week and it was rather an epic journey taking 45 minutes for the round trip. This week I wandered down and back, and had a chat with Peter who was down there gardening, and made the round trip in less than 25 minutes.

The trees we have planted around the dam are looking glorious and the water hole has been covered over with red weed which is great cover for all the frogs living in the water.

One of the other things that happened on Wednesday was that I noticed a suture had started to work its way through the scar tissue of my left knee. This happened with the right knee and last time the surgeon told me not to touch the suture and just let the suture make its way out naturally. So I decided this was all pretty normal. However on Thursday the area around the "piece of string" started to pinken and I went down and talked to the pharmacist about whether I should panic or whether an antiseptic cream would be useful to manage the pinkness.

He thought it would be fine with some antiseptic cream and told me that if it got any worse I should go and see a doctor. Peter was embarrassed as he thought I was making a big deal out of it and he thought I should relax about it. However, by Friday night I thought it was getting angrier and so on Saturday morning, I got Peter to drop me off at the doctors in Hastings while he took Lewis for a walk. By the time I got to the doctors it was looking nastier with pus and blood coming out.

So the doctor dug around in the scar and pulled out the suture end and cut it off with a scalpel. It was all rather gruesome. And I am back again on a higher dose of antibiotics than I took two weeks ago. He confirmed that I hadn't been over reacting and that I needed to take action to make sure the infection didn't get worse and or affect my implant.

So - in summary - I can walk further and more confidently now than I could after the previous surgery. I can sleep well. I have really needed the painkillers this week - so haven't been able to wind back on the pills - and in fact I am taking more pills - taking a second course of antibiotics that upset my stomach. Because of the risk of wound infection I can't get back swimming until the scar heals.

I am really hoping next week is more straight forward and I can get out and spend time in my vegetable garden and get back to watch frogs by the dam.