Monday 30 April 2012

Knee Pain - Rehab: Day 27

Another lovely rest day, well, I say rest I mean not much walking but still quite busy. I slept in late - not great for my clexane injections but I needed the sleep - washed my hair, went shopping, worked on some old blog posts, watched a lot of House, got in the bath, and watched more House with some cake. All in all not a bad day.

Walking around today, especially around ASDA, I noticed that I've got some knee pain sneaking through the pain killers. It's on the inner side of my knee which suggests it has something to do with the clot as the pain is radiating from that area. I'm going to get Dr Mannering to take a look at it in the week and compare it to the scan I just had. In the mean time I'm just going to have to take the pressure off my leg when I walk and to use the crutches more effectively.

Since coming out of hospital I have found it quite difficult to wash my hair and shower/bathe all in one sitting. My strategy for the time being is to wash my hair one day and shower the next or do one in the morning and the other at night. I find that if I do them all in the one sitting it makes me feel quite ill. I don't know if it's the heat or the excursion that makes it difficult or something else entirely but the point is that I can't do it at the moment. I'm thinking about getting a bath seat so that I can sit down whilst I have a shower, that means I probably be able to wash my hair at the same time without spending too much energy.

Energy wise I'm feeling pretty good. I think the last couple of days of rest has done me good and I'm ready to go back to work tomorrow for 4 hours a day. I've also got to go and get fitted for some more compression stockings tomorrow and to see Dr Mannering the hematologist on Thursday for a check up and to review the Doppler scan on my clots as well as the IVC filter.  

I've been sleeping without compression stockings for the last couple of nights as well and it's not as bad as the last time I tried. The swelling is minimal in the morning and I seem to be sleeping a little better at night too. 

My injections are playing havoc with me at the moment. I've got little hematoma (little lumps at the injection sites) all over my tummy which are quite sore to the touch and a fair amount of bruising to go with that. I've had to stop doing them myself at the moment as all of the pain free sites are damaged so my partner in crime is having to do them on the really painful sites which means I normally end up bleeding or in pain for a while. I should be back to self-injecting in a week or so once the bruising and hematoma have healed up.

One of the other side effects of clexane is hair loss. I noticed this morning that I'm starting to lose quite a bit of hair when I brush (20 - 30 strands compared to the 2-5 normal) and I've got a couple of small bald spots near my forehead. Luckily I've only got 20 days left of clexane so I'm hoping that my hair will start to grow back once I switch over to Warfarin.

Have you ever suffered with hematoma? If you have leave me a message with any tips you might have.

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