Joint Replacement Recovery at Home

How to heal after leaving Adventist Health Sonora

Our goal is to return you to the safety and comfort of your own home by the second day after surgery. Some patients, however, recover quickly enough to go home on the first day while others may need an extra day before they can be safely discharged home. On occasion, a patient may need a few additional days in transitional care or other assisted living facility before they are able to go home.

Outpatient therapy & visiting nurse

After your return home, a home physical therapist and visiting nurse will work with you to safely continue your recovery and rehabilitation. This service will generally continue for two or three weeks after your return home. Following this, you will transition to twice-weekly outpatient physical therapy, at the direction of your physician.

Self-care attitude: A note to friends and family

Over the years, it has been our observation that individuals with a motivated, independent, "do-it-myself attitude" have had the best results with joint replacement surgery. For this reason, we feel the best mindset to promote is that the patient get up and move around when they need something.

Although assistance for safety by a family member is important, please do not wait on their every need. Having pride in this independent attitude is a behavior to encourage — and in our experience, it is associated with better results from the surgery.

General recovery

Please remember the rate of your healing and recovery is unique to you and your situation. Please don't make the assumption that something is wrong with your recovery just because it's different than the person(s) you may have talked to before or after your surgery.

Remember that:

• You will talk to people who recover slower, as well as faster than you
• You will talk to people that have had a much easier recovery or a much tougher recovery than you
• You will have people tell you the pain was the worst pain they could ever imagine
• You will hear people say the pain was much less than they expected or less than they had been living with
• If you have had another joint replaced, it will be a different recovery from the first —sometimes easier, other times harder