Finally, some progress

This weekend my husband and I focused on my leaving the third floor of my home. Since the surgery, I had only left the third floor twice: once to go to the first post-op appointment with Dr. Trice and once to sit on the deck for an hour. Our bedroom is on the third floor and that has been the central location for my convalescence. It's very comfortable, but two weeks in one room is... well I am sure you can imagine. Going down the stairs on crutches is easy, but going back up is dangerously exhausting. I always have my husband spot me at least on the way up, and I would have fallen on Sunday if he hadn't.

Sometime on Monday, I seemed to turn an itty bitty corner. I began to notice that is was less painful to move my leg when getting up or sitting down. I became more willing to get up and crutch across the room to do or get something because the cost of that action was more reasonable.

My biggest triumph is that I discovered I could slightly bend and hold my own leg while on the crutches without the brace. It's hard to describe the position, but a healthy person playing with crutches would bend one leg to lift it slightly off the ground and then swing that leg forward whenever swinging the crutches forward. I can do that now, so it is comfortable and a significant improvement over leaving the leg locked and dragging it in a shuffle motion. When my in-home physical therapist came to see me Tuesday morning, I said "I can do something new!" and proceeded to crutch around to show him. :)

I have also further reduced my medication.

- Home +15 days (aka Surgery +18 days): Reduced Vicodin from one pill (7.5 mg Hydrocodone and 325 mg acetaminophen per pill) every 3 hours to one every 4 hours.

- +16 days: Reduced Vicodin to every 5 hours.

- +17 days: Reduced Vicodin to every 6 hours. Now at the lowest continuous dosage.

- +18 days (today): Plan to reduce Oxycontin from twice a day to once a day, which means no evening dose. Next step regarding Vicodin is to only take it before physical therapy, but I'm not going to try to stop continuous dosage until after reducing the Oxycontin.

Today marks three weeks since the surgery and I am very happy to finally feel just a little bit stronger. My next post-op appointment with Dr. Trice is tomorrow and I start outpatient physical therapy next Tuesday. Oh, we took off the steri-strips too so I have a new picture (GR 3).