Surgery Recovery - Day 2

Its Saturday, here are some things I learned from Friday:

• My boyfriend is the best. Not only did he wait at the hospital all day Thursday, take me home and wait on me, he has continued to do so since then. He's been outside maybe 5 times with the exciting goal of grabbing ice, diet ginger ale, and various other items I might want at some point. He wakes up in the middle of the night to give me medicine and refresh my ice, encourages me when I'm being pissy and depressed, insists I don't smell (I'm certain he is lying, but don't want to dwell on whether I smell more like a sty or a hospital) and has been really supportive and generally amazing.
• If you have Game Ready and a brace, when they send you home you will have both on at the same time. This turned out to be way too much for me. The pressure and weight made any attempts at bathroom breaks excruciating. Instead, Saturday I kept the game ready on all day unless I had to pee break. For pee breaks I remove the game ready and put the stabilizer brace back on. Switch em back when you are finished.
• Supporting your busted leg with your good leg helps a lot when you are trying to move and no one is there to help or when you are switching braces and just need to lift it a couple inches. For me, supporting my right leg by sticking my left foot under it and lifting when switching braces helped a lot.
• I am using the term pee break for a reason. Check your medication, peeing is all you may be able to do. As I'm sure you can imagine, this becomes most uncomfortable. Stock up on stool softeners (sorry, it's gross, I know).
• Your back is going to hurt. This particularly sucks when you wake up in the middle of the night with knee and back pain. Why the hell can't it only be the knee? To remedy this I sit on the couch during the day - its firmer and the pillows support my back well. At night I made sure I was using a really low pillow just under my head and that my hips were in the same position, even though my right leg was up on a pillow. Yes its awkward.

Saturday was much of the same - the pain had reduced by a little so I was happy - or at least not as cranky and miserable as Friday. I was still unable to move around - couldn't get out of bed or off the couch, definitely couldn't stand on the crutches for more than a couple minutes. We sat around watching college football while I ate meds and used Game Ready (I love that thing). We also realized the resident who prescribed the pain meds for me hadn't prescribed enough to take me through the weekend. Awesome. Since the hospital was closed and the on call person told us the Dr. was not to be bothered for prescriptions I had to cut back on pain meds, which totally sucks. I highly recommend you have whoever is taking you home check your prescription before you get discharged and make them give you more if you don't have enough to make it through to your post-op appointment.