Day One

We arrived at the hospital just before 7:00.
I think surgery started pretty promptly at 9:00.  But before that, I had to wipe down with these sticky wet wipes of antibacterial stuff - 3 packs, two wipes each, each for a different part of the body. Nasty.

I think I got back to my room just before noon. I don't really have any memory of going back to my room, though I have some memory from the recovery area. By 12:30, they had me on the leg bendy machine.  This is a device that slowly bends your knee and then straightens it.  I also had "puffers" on each leg, puffing alternately, that would inflate periodically to help prevent blood clots.  In addition, I had a blood pressure cuff on my arm that would randomly inflate. They all ran at different speeds, so I had the weird experience of having everything inflating, deflating, and moving all at once.  I never knew what was going to happen next, and in my happy place I found it quite entertaining.

At 1:30, I had my first go at walking - to the bathroom, whether I needed to or not.  At 2:00, they introduced me to my "new best friend", my spirometer.  It's a device that makes you take slow, even, deep breaths to prevent pneumonia.  6-8 times an hour, all day long

The food service is run like hotel room service.  You have a menu that you can order from anytime.  They gave me some water and jello to see if I could keep it down.  When I passed that test, they let me order dinner from the "full liquid" menu (more selections that the "clear liquid" menu).  I had cream of wheat, lemon ice, and coffee for dinner.  That seems weird, looking at it now, but at the time it was exactly what I wanted.

I was really comfortable thanks to the "Lombardi cocktail", a mix of drugs injected during surgery, which keeps you numb for hours and hours afterward.  Because I was pain free, I was able to raise my own leg and put it in the machine unaided, But it would be days before I could do it again.  By the next day, my leg felt like it weighed 1000 lbs and would not move.  I later had to use a strap to move my leg with my hands (hard to describe).  I didn't have, or need, a pain pump, just Norco (like Vicodin) and Celebrex at intervals.