Dear LPG,

I have read a couple of your news posts which have been written by LPG readers who have chosen to talk about their experiences after knee replacement operations.   I want to talk about one characteristic of that experience that may not make pleasant reading, but which also I hope will not offend readers.

I had one about 5 months ago and, like everyone else that has talked about them before; I now understand what has been said about the perseverance anyone who has had one of these operations really needs to have in order to come out the other side walking without pain.  The physiotherapists who have helped me through say that I am not doing too badly now, and it is getting easier to get about although it has been a slow and painful process. But that initial pain is the thing that I want to talk about.  

I know that the operation allowed me to feel just a small taste of what so many others go through permanently.  I was given Co-Codamol to help with the initial pain and it worked well but, in spite of all the warnings, I was not prepared for the constipation side-effect, that I have heard so much about and, in spite of all the medication that I was given to counteract that side-effect, that aspect of my experience has been as punishing as the rest of the process put together.

It is something that few who have suffered, and continue to suffer from, really want to talk about but when I was in the depths of my encounter with it, I did a little reading and found some explanations and remedies that went some way to help me.  I found out about a new remedy that may help but has quite a few side-effects of its own called Naloxegol, and also found some suggestions about things that can be taken and done that may make a difference.  Everybody is different, so I am not sure how effective they are likely to be for others who suffer but some made a difference for me and doing the research helped too.   I would like LPG to leave the links for anyone who might appreciate the information.

Ps, I had a bad knee so I could not use the footstool.

CG, Forest Hill

LPG hopes that CG’s links prove helpful to some and applaud this attempt at writing about a subject that many may rather not see on paper.  Much of the information is American but while we are all different as CG mentions, there is not a lot of difference, in general,  between people in the US and those in the UK.  We would  remind readers that any potentially radical changes that are planned should be mentioned to a GP.  

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