Barbara, age 54
The second week, however, I started experiencing back pain that made anything associated with the surgery seem like a dance around the maypole.
I’ve had back pain in the past, so I knew that bending your knee takes pressure off the lower back. But I couldn’t do that because of the brace. They had also told me not to use my hip to move my leg. So instead of using a hip motion to roll over, I would have to bend down and grab the base of my leg. But my leg was in a brace and perfectly straight. I was constantly reaching over and grabbing the leg. All of this put a strain on my back.
I mean, that pain drove me nuts. It was only then that I started to take the medication at night so I could get to sleep. After about seven days—as I became more mobile, better able to put more weight on the left leg, and as my weight distribution became more even—the back pain subsided. When I mentioned this problem to the surgeon, he said it was a common side effect.
I wish I had known about this before. I would have taken steps earlier in the process to try and relieve the strain on my back. For instance, I might have rigged some kind of a strap to my ankle, so that if I wanted to lift my leg off a chair or a table, I could simply pull on the strap so that my leg would come up. Or, if I was scooting up the stairs on my behind, I would have asked my husband to support my leg as I took each step.
My husband and I have been married for over 30 years, and during that time we’ve each had our illnesses and times when we needed each other. There’s an understanding: “If you’re sick, I’m there for you.” I’m sure there were times I drove him crazy. I know that I’ve felt that way in the past—“Oh my god! There he goes again, calling for something else.” But those feelings are kept under wraps. There wasn’t any friction between us. I felt well taken care of.
The first time I took a shower was a shock. I hadn’t had the brace off yet, or all the dressings. When I removed them, my leg looked like a little toothpick with a huge lump in it. I recalled the surgeon telling me that one of the residual effects was a permanent scar. He even asked how I felt about it. I didn’t care about a scar, but when I saw the leg looking so deformed and so pathetically weak, I was almost hysterical. I had lost two and a half inches in my thigh, two inches in my calf; and my knee was three inches larger than before. Instead of taking a shower, I sat and cried. I didn’t have any perspective. I was afraid that my leg would always look like that.