Last night, Beth and I watched the first half of the new extended DVD of “Two Towers”. I just couldn’t sit through the full 4 hour movie and she didn’t think she could either. So we agreed to just enjoy the first DVD. We’ll watch the second one last night. So far, as with the 1st Lord of the Rings movie, I like the additional footage they added.
As you can see from the time stamp on this blog entry, it’s pretty early in the morning. I guess I slept a lot yesterday, and when I wasn’t asleep I was horizontal resting on a bed or couch. Then, I went to bed around 9:30. All this meant that I woke up around 2:00 AM wide awake. So I decided to come strap into the knee machine and get some reps on that. I increased the speed to 60% and the range of motion to 50 degrees.
One of the things the nurses told me yesterday after surgery was that I need to monitor my pain level, and track it on a scale of 0 to 9. 0 is, of course, no pain at all. 9 is the most excruciating pain you can imagine. She said their goal was to keep me at 2 or 3, and if it gets to 5, I should contact them. After thinking about it this morning, I realized that so far my pain has not even gotten to 1. I took 2 pain pills with lunch yesterday, and then was sleepy all afternoon. I tried experimentally putting a little weight on the leg that was operated on and didn’t have any pain there. So, then when it was time for pain meds – at dinner – I just took 1 pill. That was about 6 PM yesterday. I haven’t taken anything since then. 9 hours later, I still haven’t had any pain or soreness that exceeds what I’d consider “background” level. Like anyone, I always have little aches and pains here and there – in my back when I sleep in one position too long, in my other (good) knee from time to time, and so on. But so far, I haven’t had any pain or soreness at all in the knee that was operated on. Maybe I’ll have some when I start using that leg more seriously without crutches. We’ll see. But since I’m not having any pain, I don’t see a lot of reason to take the pain medicine. They’re supposed to call me sometime today to follow up and make sure I’m doing OK, and I’ll ask if it’s OK to skip the generic percocet. I’d still continue to take the Celebrex until it’s all gone, since that doesn’t make me sleepy.