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Wonders of modern medecine


Stallard12

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I had most of my hospital stays in the 1950's, mostly due to motorcycle and bicycle calamities - I once wore a full leg cast for over six months !!!!

My wife had full knee replacement surgery a week and four days ago.  She came out of surgery at 11:00 am and they had her walking around her room at 1:00 pm, then on a knee bending machine at 3:00pm and it didn't stop after that.  I brought her home on the morning of the third day and started supervising her rehabilitation, plus cooking, cleaning .........  most exhausting three days of my life - we had home physio and nurse visits to keep me on track.

After two days at home she was getting up out of bed and chairs alone and making solo bathroom trips.  Now after a week and four days, she is walking around the house and driveway unaided.  Absolutely mind blowing to me !!!!

If I had it done, I'd refuse to get out of bed for a year !!!!!

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Great to hear  your wife is making such a quick recovery Stallard :D  Amazing what can be done these days but they do say that sometimes recovery is down to the mind and determination to 'get over it'. 

Shame on you for saying you'd be in bed for a year...surely 6 months is more than enough for a man :lol: :lol: :wink:

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I am truly amazed by it.  We leave on our annual Caribbean cruise on October 4th so she has an incentive and she's determined not to miss any dining room time, but maybe no dancing this time.   Tonight she rode in the golf cart to the clubhouse parking lot and walked probably a half a mile.  As I say, I find it difficult to believe.

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That is the thing with the likes of surgery on jonts either broken or replaced. They want you to get up and start using them as soon as possible so that the muscles don't become atrophied through lack of use.

 

the funny thing is had it been something like a burst achilles tendon then they advise that you do not put any weight on it for about a month to enable it to heal.

 

Only know this as my mum had a really bad experience with both these types of injuries. Firstly she burst her achilles tendon and then about a week after that forgot about not putting weight on it and had a fall very badly breaking the femur of her other leg. As a result the surgeon was advising her to get up and walk about to get the muscles wroking on her left leg and the  physio was telling her not to walk anywhere to give her tendon a chance to heal.

 

thankfully her tendon has healed and although she is up and doddering about now, albeit with the aid of a walking frame, her femur is still healing but not as fast as the surgeon would have liked.

 

Only experience of surgery i have had was having stents fitted after a heart attack. Went to the heart hospital at eight, was in watching them put the stents in at two that afternoon and back home by six. three weeks later was pronounced fit to work provided i did not lift any heav y weights. And all done through a small tube put in my arm under a local anasthetic.

Thinking back to when i was a nipper it would have entailed about a wek in hospital prior to open heart surgery and about the same in intensive care afterwards, plus possible another month as a ward patient before they would reluctantly let you out of the hospital. As you say totally amazing what modern techniques can do to get you out of their way and home to free up a bed for the next patient.

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Yes it is amazing how things progessed 20 years ago 10 days in hospital for a quad bypass, then 6 months later just over 24 hours for a stent.

March this year after a cardiac arrest, cpr and defribulator,  follwed by an ICD  opertation  5 days in hospital  I now have my own inbuilt defribulator in case I need it in the future and whats more its monitored from home via wifi to the hosptal - amazing

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There is a downside though, with all of the whooshing and clicking from the pneumatic leg cuffs and the shushing from the oxygen feed and the whirring of all the mechanical gadgets, it's like trying to sleep under an old steam train with the Spike Jones band playing flat out.

I'm an old Warrington Infirmary guy, where the foremost medical equipment was a mug of hot tea. Where the only noises heard at night were the squeaking of the nurses shoes, the cries of those in pain and the rasping of the dying. Ahhh happy days

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