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post surgical fatigue and lightheadedness
Joint Replacements | Last Active: Apr 12 1:11pm | Replies (41)Comment receiving replies
Thank you. That is helpful. My surgery was May 7th. I think a lot of my fatigue is related to my RA and other autoimmune diseases. I do eat as much protein as I can. Eggs every morning! I work retail so I do get a lot of moving around all day. I may need some other exercise to get my heart pumping a bit more.
Thanks again for your response.
Replies to "Thank you. That is helpful. My surgery was May 7th. I think a lot of my..."
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I have always thought that it takes about 3 months for the body to recover from smaller surgeries and a year for major ones. When I was young, I could fool myself into thinking I was "over it" and keep going much sooner than that. Now, slightly older and with other health issues, that is no longer true...you just have to let the body recover.
Remember - you have been anesthetized, traumatized and put back together. Each of those alone would be a thing to deal with, but put together, that's a bug deal! And you have other fatiguing conditions and a job! As for aerobic exercise, one of the quickest ways to get your heart rate up is find some stairs to climb, start by going up and down once or twice and build from there. After one major surgery before I retired, I did it by using the restroom down one floor from my office to start, and progressed to climbing stairs to my 4th floor office at least 3 times a day.
My 40 yo daughter is just learning this lesson big time - she was traumatized (compound arm fracture) anesthetized and put back together - now she is mending and being pushed with therapy. What she thought would be 12 weeks of recovery will take probably a year. And her job is sedentary!
Be gentle with yourself!
Sue