WARNING:
This post is a boring MEDICAL RE-HASH and you might want to skip over it.
Good Morning Wrabbits!
And YES....I did get a good nights sleep with the help of a half sleeping pill. Hey, you have to do what you have to do. Only YOU know what your body is going through.
I wish I could go into the the reasoning of the WHY I only got a Scoped out /clean out of this knee done rather than a knee replacement. It has a lot to do with insurance procedures these days. They MAKE the doctors jump through hoops like they never had years ago. Digressing back to Art's first back issues. The doctor wasn't allowed to just JUMP in and DO a Discectomy of his spine area until he had PAIN MANAGEMENT TREATMENT, (which of course is less than a Band-Aid procedure) then he had to do PHYSICAL THERPY (in the case of Art's back issue that was another wasted step that only delayed the inevitable) but Art knew the surgeon and knew in the end he would have the best guy doing his eventual DISECTOMY. So when had MORE back issues he was able to move along a little quicker with the process to get the bad disks fixed.
I do feel that this scope and clean out procedure is a BAND-AID at the best. The doctor told me that from the MRI pictures he knew he couldn't fix the tear COMPLETELY. I run with wanting to make sure by going into the knee with the scope and knowing for sure what is going on in there. The new pictures tell me a lot of Arthritis was scrapped out of the area and cleaned up. Had I not SAT ON MY KNEE the way I DID I most likley wouldn't be in this situation to know I had that much Arthritis to begin with.
This gives me the TIME I need to investigate just what kind of knee replacements they use at this hospital and if I need to seek a different hospital and surgeon to do the replacement. All things I need to talk to this current doctor about. Beaumont has had some issues with being a MONEY MAKING HOPSITAL with new CEO's, etc at the top and BEAN COUNTERS that make the doctors us a certain product that is cost effective rather than what the doctors want to use. Last year they had RESIDENT DOCTORS that spent their entire careers in the Orthopedic Dept pull up and leave the hospital and take their families to DIFFERENT STATES to hospitals that let them choose what instruments (hardware) they will be using in patients for knees, hips, arms, legs, etc. It wasn't widely brought up in the Media, but if you read the Crain's newspaper it tells you all these things. I picked up on it big time because of Art and his BACK ISSUES and possible future back issues.
So by doing this SCOPE I bought myself some time to do my due-diligence on a full knee replacement. And who knows if I have enough time to work on this or if after this heals it will be MORE PAINFUL than it was before?? It will be to put it bluntly a CRAP SHOOT either way. But I like to let my doctors know I'm not just walking in and signing up for something I don't need ASAP.
WOW.... all that might not make much sense, but I'm going to post it anyways.
As far as any of your folks other issues. Each must go with your own gut feeling and what you think your doctors have in your best interest.
Lee: I'm sure if the doctors opened you up and you had 2 blocked arteries and the 3rd one was in the 50% percentile they would fix that one at the same time. Along with the other work they did. Like DAVE said it's a good thing you were a active basically healthy person going into this surgery or you might not be as far along as you are right now.
I LOVE the fact that you get to go through this intense outpatient RE-HAB program. It's like unheard of hear in the STATES. All that monitoring and blood work tests, etc. And I'm SO GLAD you're doing it. Keep up the good work and concentrate on everything they tell you to do at home. It's a interruption in your way of living, but heck let's be up front here... YOU'RE ALIVE and that's all that counts. We just have to deal with what's handed to us in our Senior years. OUR MINDS THINK WE'RE YOUNGER THAN WE REALLY ARE. THE MIND DOESN'T WANT TO DEAL WITH REALITY and work with our BODIES at times.
Okay, I need to get up and walk around and see just how I'm doing with this knee 24 hours out from surgery. Sitting here I feel little to nothing in the way of discomfort. When I lift my leg (I just did it while sitting here) I can feel where the Probe went into my knee. I consider that normal. There were 2 probes and I feel one side more than the other. According to the hand-out instruction sheet this is all normal. Take a Tylenol or one of the Opioid type pills if it is severe pain and stay off the leg as much as possible. I'll tell you right now that this girl will only be taking the TYLENOL. It worked yesterday just fine.
We sat at the bar and talked to them once in a while. I get the feeling that we are no longer part of that group, but you know what - I don't really give a sh*t! We do our own thing these days thanks to this stupid virus.
