Nesting for the Holidays

My holiday season in 2016 was dominated with preparations for a second knee joint replacement surgery.  My preparations are peculiar to my personality.  First, I’m a real “nester.”  I want my surroundings to be fun and upbeat.  For me, fall means decorating for specific holidays!  This was going to be more difficult this year because I wanted all Christmas decorations to be completed before my November 30 surgery, but I didn’t want to ignore Thanksgiving.  My turkey collection makes me smile.

Dining Room Table ready for Thanksgiving

I also had cooking I wanted to do before my surgery.  We had homegrown produce I wanted to use.  Our Meyer lemon tree, still potted in a half barrel container, yielded about a dozen lemons, and my friend gave me more from her huge lemon tree.  I wanted to use my lemons, so I opted  to make lemon blueberry muffins.  I was able freeze muffins to eat for breakfast after my surgery.  

Lemon Blueberry Muffin

We had an abundance of bell peppers late in the season.  I was determined to use them, too.  I made several  dishes of stuffed peppers, some vegetarian and some stuffed with ground turkey.  I froze small casseroles of stuffed peppers for post-surgery meals, then cut up the rest of the peppers to freeze and use for gumbo.

Pepper Preparation

My most time-consuming and important task was insuring that my downstairs recovery space was to my liking.  We don’t have a downstairs bedroom in our old house, so again we made up the sofa bed in the music/living room, complete with memory foam mattress.  

Treble quickly embraced the idea of nesting in the living room bed.  We watched a lot of football during the first month of my recovery (when I wasn't doing my physical therapy exercises).

 

 My husband, my personal nurse since his retirement, even served me Continental breakfast in bed.

 

Friends and neighbors were incredibly generous in providing meals.  One neighbor delivered a beautiful gift bag full of food--four individual casseroles of homemade shepherd's pie, makings for a fresh fruit salad, homemade cookies, and the December issue of Good Housekeeping magazine.

Another friend and his wife prepared a Louisiana favorite of fried shrimp, fries, garlic bread and salad.  And these were the meals I remembered to document with photos.  For two weeks, Ricky and I didn't lift a finger in the kitchen.

I was able to enjoy my recuperation during the holidays because I surrounded myself with a few-- okay, a lot, of my favorite things.  On the music room mantle, I displayed four Wood World Santas made in a cottage industry during the 1970's and 1980's in my hometown of Marion, Virginia, along with many other Santa Claus figures I've collected over the years.

I hung copies of vintage postcards on an inexpensive tree, added red ornaments and some hand crocheted snow flakes from my hometown.  This provided me with a lovely recovery room Christmas tree.

My friend Elizabeth in New Orleans decided I needed a big singing Santa and a dog like Treble, so one day these arrived in the mail and were added to the fireplace scene.

After the music/living room was complete, I moved on to decorate the foyer, dining room, and my library because these would be the other downstairs spaces I would inhabit during the early weeks of my recovery.  And when I say decorate, I mean I created my own Christmas world.  

Every year I question my sanity but each year my inner child takes over and tells the adult to hush and just go with it.  So I do.  

My Total Knee Replacement Surgery is a Success

My third bit of advice regarding total knee replacement surgery:  it's important that you prepare physically for your knee surgery.  While I'm not in any way a svelte, hard body, I did start working out about a year before my knee surgery in anticipation of the operation.  I signed up for TRX Camps for Baby Boomers at Willis Knighton, North, coupled with a pool class with low impact exercises done in a heated pool at LSU Health Sciences Center.  I exercised religiously to tighten my core and strengthen my upper and lower body. 

To learn more about TRX, click here

Pete Holman, a physical therapist and certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) at TRX says, "Whatever your fitness goals, this [TRX] workout system can accommodate anyone from senior citizens with injuries to Olympic-level athletes."  I believe I'm proof of the former.

Conditioning made a HUGE difference, but it’s also the reason I cried during my initial physical therapy home health appointment.  I had a drill sergeant PT and he wanted me to engage my quads to straighten my knee.  I thought I was doing it, but he kept saying, “Tighten those muscles, you aren’t doing anything.”  I knew I had built up my quads, and I couldn’t understand why I was unable to do well on the exercise.  Tears of pain and frustration ran down my face as Ricky and the PT watched me.  I later figured out that the spinal block that they used to deaden my knee didn’t wear off completely, for me, until almost 12 days after surgery.  I knew something was amiss but it took returning to normal for me to realize what was wrong with my body in the beginning. 

There is pain with this surgery, but drugs and ice packs help.  I approached my therapy like I did my workouts.  I wore my exercise clothing, prepared a large cup of ice water, and worked and sweated every day doing the exercises whether the PT came or not.  My husband says I’m a compliant patient.  One afternoon I was sobbing as I tried to straighten and bend my knee but I didn’t give up.  My drill sergeant PT, a perfectionist, was rarely satisfied with my progress but when he was absent and another PT came, he told me my first guy was being too hard on me.  PT#2 said I was doing really well and ready for out-patient therapy.  (Actually I liked Drill Sergeant PT and credit him with much of my progress.)  Currently, I’ve had two weeks of out-patient therapy and resumed my pool exercise class.  Next week, eight weeks after my surgery, I’ll have my final PT sessions. 

Now everything becomes therapy, says my TRX instructor who has also had a knee joint replacement.  (Unfortunately, it's too early to return to TRX, my favorite exercise program.)  Trips to the grocery store, going up and down the stairs to my bedroom (I no longer stay in the middle of the living room), getting up from a chair—or, as one of my physical therapists told me, “If it’s physical, it’s therapy.”   

My 8" scar!

I continue on the road to regaining full strength and mobility in my right knee.  Unfortunately, as soon as I make enough progress, I’ll have to get a new left knee joint.  However, if this right knee experience is any indication of what I might expect, I may do it as a Christmas present to myself. 

Total Knee Joint Replacement Surgery Can Be Fun

I never knew getting a total knee joint replacement could be fun.  I’m not saying the surgery, which I’ve heard two doctors describe as bloody, was fun, but I was knocked out so I have no complaints there.  When I interviewed my surgeon before I decided on a doctor, I asked him about infection control.  He told me it was important not to touch the open wound.  I’m not sure what his other patients have been like, but that would be the least of his worries with me.   Touching an open wound, looking at an open wound--neither appears on my curiosity list.  Besides my knee was so protected after surgery with a thick, waterproof bandage, I don’t know how a person would even get to the incision. 

We don’t have a downstairs bedroom so we had to create one for me to stay in, post-op.  In our living room, known at our house as the music room because of my husband’s large vinyl collection, the sofa turns into a bed.  Ricky put a portable memory foam mattress on the thin sofa mattress, creating a comfortable bed.  I packed up lounging clothes and toiletries in a laundry basket, and I was ready for my new quarters.  

View from my music room bed with bouquet

Treble and me lying on the music room bed

I could have stayed in the guest cottage behind our house, but living in the middle of our music room meant the household revolved around me.  Ricky couldn’t sneak downstairs for coffee in the morning without waking me.  This meant I got served coffee and a breakfast of fresh fruit and some sort of pastry or quick bread in bed every morning. 

This is where I need to say that if you are going to have fun with your total knee replacement, you must first select a caring and knowledgeable partner.  My husband Ricky is adorable and smart and kind.  He is also a retired nurse.  So, when I needed some modifications for handicapped accessibility, he was on it.  When I needed a shot in the stomach every morning for three weeks to avoid blood clots, he was on it.  As wonderful as Ricky was, he came to look forward to his daily trip to the local Walgreen’s.  It seemed like there was always something I needed that we didn’t have.  I quickly stopped apologizing when I realized the trip to Walgreens represented freedom for Ricky each afternoon.

Secondly, you must select awesome friends.  And you have to start years in advance of your surgery to secure these, so don’t wait to the last minute to find the perfect partner or friends.  While Ricky was holding down the fort in those first two weeks, my friends were insuring that we wouldn’t starve.  Good friends in New Orleans sent an edible arrangement of fresh fruit.   

Edible Arrangement

Pork loin dinner

My best friend prepared several meals, and she and another friend from work brought me a goody basket I ate from for days—hummus, banana bread, fresh pimento cheese, flatbread, almonds and dried fruit. My friend and TRX instructor prepared two healthy meals for Ricky and me that actually fed us multiple days.  Long- time friends dropped by for a visit and brought sweet goodies and a gift certificate from our neighborhood bakery.   My former boss and her sister brought me chicken salad from my favorite restaurant and small decadent chocolate cakes.  My across-the-street friend and neighbor came by to visit bringing little goodies each time.  A good friend who had recently moved to another state sent us pizza delivery one night.  My writing group also supplied sustenance-- from pastas to guacamole to gelato. 

One neighbor loaned me all sorts of adaptive equipment.   My sister-in-law wired a bouquet of flowers.  Get well cards arrived each day in the mail.  My sisters in Virginia called frequently to check on me.  Two friends came and stayed with me so Ricky could escape to a near-by town one Sunday to visit friends and attend a benefit for an ailing musician.  I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such considerate friends. 

A good caregiver and wonderful friends are the factors that made my knee replacement “fun,” but tomorrow I’ll talk about what made my knee replacement successful.