Having a close friend or family member by your side to assist you through your recovery can make a huge difference in preventing a range of potential complications, from wound care to falls.

Your other option would be to arrange for a professional home care worker to come to your residence. What is covered will depend on your insurance:

• Commercial Health Insurance: These policies typically cover some home care services, but benefits for long-term services vary from plan to plan.
• Medicare: Home care is covered if you’re homebound, under a physician’s care and require medically necessary skilled nursing or therapy services. To determine coverage under the Medicare program, go to http://www.medicare.gov.
• Medicaid: This is a joint federal-state medical assistance program for low-income individuals administered by the states. While each has its own set of eligibility requirements, they’re only mandated to provide home health services to individuals who receive federally assisted income maintenance payments, such as SSI and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and individuals who are “categorically needy.” To find out if you’re eligible, call your state’s Medicaid office or go to http://www.benefits.gov.

In the first 24-48 hours after surgery, you will likely experience substantial discomfort, varying from mild pain to pressure to significant pain, which will be managed by your doctor with medications such as:

• Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDS): These are typically used to relieve arthritis, reduce inflammation and treat other causes of pain.
• Opioids: These are typically prescribed for moderate to severe pain.

They’ll be taken prior to getting out of bed, walking or doing exercises. All of them have side effects, but not everyone gets them. The most common side effects are constipation, nausea and vomiting, sleepiness, dizziness, rash, itching and slowed breathing, and you should let your doctor know if you start to experience any of these.

To help with the pain during your rehabilitative exercises, it’s important to prepare your muscles by applying a heating pad to your knee for five minutes before you begin. Then after, you should apply an ice pack for up to 15 minutes.

Besides your knee, you may also experience pain in other parts of your body, such as in your throat if a breathing tube was used, or in your back, chest and/or shoulder muscles because you were lying down during and after surgery. However, these symptoms should ease with time.

After 10-14 days, you will usually be able to stop taking strong pain medications as you’re getting back to normal.

As your incision heals, it’s perfectly normal to feel some discomfort and numbness in the area. This means new nerves and tissue are growing as your body accepts your knee implant.

It’s also normal to have temporary swelling, pressure and/or bruising in your ankles and feet, and these may last for a few months. However, always discuss your symptoms with your doctor to make sure nothing disrupts your recovery.

Here are a couple things you can do to help:

• Ice your knee (always cover ice packs in a towel to avoid frostbite)
• Wear compression stockings
• Elevate your leg with a pillow
• Ankle exercises

Once you’re at home recovering, one of the risks is blood clots. Because you aren’t moving around as much, blood collects in the veins of your legs and feet, which can lead to the formation of clots. These can move from your legs to your lungs and cause pulmonary embolism, so it’s important to do everything you can to prevent them.

Your doctor will prescribe you blood thinners that act as an anticoagulant, and you may take these for up to 35 days after surgery.

Here are some ways to prevent blood clots:

• Wear compression stockings: These are very tight-fitting knee-high socks that help your blood flow better, and your doctor may ask you to wear these for several weeks.
• Use an intermittent compression pump device: This is similar to a blood pressure cuff that repeatedly inflates and deflates to help blood flow better in your legs.
• Avoid wearing tight clothing for the first few weeks.
• Keep your legs elevated: A few times a day, for the first few weeks, elevate your legs six inches above your heart.
• Change your position often.
• Avoid standing or sitting for more than an hour at a time.
• Reduce the amount of salt in your diet, as it causes fluid retention.
• Avoid bumping or injuring your legs.
• Avoid crossing your legs when sitting.

You should also keep an eye out and contact your doctor if you see any symptoms of blood clots, such as redness, swelling or discoloration of the skin at the site of the clot, tenderness or pain at the site of the clot, or a warm feeling at the site of the clot (but not everyone experiences these).