Once your knee replacement is over and you leave the hospital everyone looks forward to getting home and relaxing. One of the biggest obstacles met by many will be the inability to sleep. Those first couple of weeks when you get home, trying to get a decent nights sleep can be difficult. There are several tips however that will help you sleep during those first two weeks you are home.
1. Take Your Medication As Prescribed. There are individuals I have come across during physical therapy that are trying to get of their pain medication too soon. In the hospital you are medicated differently than you will be at home. Your ability to handle the pain during the evening will not be as good as it was in the hospital. It is strongly recommended that you take your pain medication prior to going to sleep each night. Trying to stop the pain medication too soon will set you up for failure in controlling your pain. If you are having trouble with your pain medication and not handling it well, call your surgeon and get something else. This will be better than going without medication.
2. Use TV Or Radio To Help You Sleep. When getting ready to go to sleep you may want to consider having a TV or radio playing softly in the background. During the night the inability to handle the pain can be due to lack of external stimuli around you. During the day you will have the TV going or listening to the radio in the background. There will be cases where friends and family stop by as well. In these instances you have other things that you are engaged in. Your mind does not focus on the pain therefore you do not have the focus on your knee itself. Sleeping with soft music in the background can be comforting and help with pain relief.
3. Avoid Too Much Activity During The Day. There will be times when you may find yourself getting involved in activities that may be better left for someone else. The first several weeks are critical that you closely monitor your activity level. You generally will not suffer the consequences of overdoing some activity until later that night when you are trying to get some sleep. It is something that everyone will experience from time to time in the initial stages of your recovery.
If you find that you are awaken by your knee during the night, it is generally letting you know to move it. Either pumping your knee while lying down or getting up and walking a little will actually calm the knee down allowing you to fall back to sleep.
Getting a sound nights sleep will be challenging at first when you get home however in time as it heals you will be able to get back to your usual sleeping patterns within two to three weeks.
