Surgery

Doing good so far. Left the hospital at 10:00 am yesterday and I was drunk as a bicycle. I could walk anywhere I wanted to and had no pain. About 5:00 pm the drunk wore off and my knee started swelling, so that limited my movement quite a bit. Still not much pain, but just can't get comfortable. 1 pain pill does take the edge off, but I hate taking those things. I'm tough and feel I don't need them. I was born in a log cabin I built with my own hands, I am tough. I did give in at bedtime and took one pill and that actually allowed me to stay in bed all night. Woke up a lot, but amazingly slept well even though I was in the same position all night.

Got up at 6:30 this morning and felt pretty good. I started getting uncomfortable about 9:30 so I took another pill. Feeling good now. I have to figure out how to get in and out of the bathtub here in a little bit. All I have is an ace bandage and a water pack on my knee. The water pack is cool. I have a cooler with ice water that you pump in the water pack. Works well. Tomorrow I get to take the ace bandage off and just use band-aids on my incisions. I hope I can still walk after taking the bandage off. I don't know how much support it is giving me.

I think my mom is going to drive me to Owensboro tonight for a supper meeting. I feel up to it, as long as I don't have to drive. Mom has helped me out a bunch. Today is the last day of tax season, so I'll have my regular nurse back tomorrow.

I didn't get to talk to the doctor after the surgery yesterday, but he did talk to my mom. The only problem is that she doesn't remember or understand most of what he said. He did say I still don't have a 20 year old knee. That's fine with me as long as I have a 39 year old knee. I go back a week from Monday to get my stitches out, so I guess I'll find out everything then. I do think it was worse than expected when he got in there.