New Knees

It wasn’t as bad as I expected.

The doctor said that the knee my husband thought was the worse, actually wasn’t. The knee that felt the worse had actually been compensating for the one that WAS the worse. The worst one had practically no cartilage. According to Wikipedia, cartilage “is responsible for much of the compressive resistance and load bearing qualities of the knee joint and, without it, walking is painful to impossible.”

Last night, he was doped up, but very alert and talking. We left around 6pm to let him get some sleep. Drain tubes from both knees drained blood into a container at the end of the bed, then the blood was suctioned into bags and fed back into his body. One of the knees hurt quite a bit, but turns out it’s because he’s tall and his feet were hitting the edge of the bed, thereby putting pressure on the incision. Once he repositioned himself, things were a little better.

This morning, he said the drain tubes were taken out. He called to say that he sat up on the edge of the bed, then they were doping him up so he could sleep for awhile.

If I remember right, he’s supposed to get an automated machine on his knees today to start bending them. Maybe that’s the reason for upping the dopage. [sic]

Anyway, that is my “new knees update” for this morning.