Pre-operation Information

On Friday Grandma went to her pre-operation appointment and met some of the nurses, the physical therapist and the occupational therapist that will help her get adjusted to her new knee!  The physical therapist  The occupational therapist will help her with life skills: stand up, sit down, go up stairs, go to the bathroom etc.  The physical therapist is more the "scary" one, Billy Christensen calls him the physical terrorist (ha ha ha) helps you strengthen your knee, stretch it, etc., a little more painful.   She was very impressed with the facility and the people.   All of his staff are handpicked and interviewed by Dr. Hoffman himself and are all very careful and meticulous as well.

One of her biggest fears going into the surgery was the risk of infection.  But, Dr. Hoffman is very meticulous about the surgery, he has it down to a science so that fewer than  0.3% of his patients get any infection after surgery.  She was given an antiseptic scrub to scrub her knee the night before, then again the morning of, and then they do it again at the hospital.  In addition, the whole entire floor was remodeled and is all brand new to reduce the risk of infection.

The doctor will call tomorrow to tell her the time of the actual surgery on Tuesday, but they think it will be around noon.  They expect she will be in the hospital for three days, and come back to Susan's on Friday.

They gave her some crutches and she has been practicing walking on them and keeping all the weight off her right leg.  She has even been practicing going up and down stairs on them.

Susan has set up a little apartment for them on their main floor, complete with a bed (with a headboard! we don't have any headboards in our whole house! lol :-) ), a sitting room with couches and chairs, and her own private bathroom.  It looks great!  They are staying at our house right now, but will get settled in at Susan's tomorrow night so they can go directly there after the hospital.