Knee replacement gone haywire

Quickly, I went in for total knee replacement, and afterwards was doing excellent, better than most.  I was walking on a cane withing 3 weeks.  Then, all of a sudden, my knee started getting red and swollen and hurt.  some nurses and docs said it was infected, some said it wasn't.  Finally, it got so bad they re-hospitalized me and took a million tests, put me on massive amounts of antibiotics, but found I did not have an infection (by blood work), and sent me home not knowing what it was.

That was last week.  I am seeing the doctor today.  I can't walk on my knee, it is swollen to double the size of my other knee, even my foot is swollen.  The entire leg aches, but the knee hurts bad!  It gets flashes of shooting pains, and it burns.  It is extremely red (although I'm still on antibiotics) and it's hot (not any worse than before, though).  I am SICK of this, they don't have a clue what is wrong, so they expect me to walk (or lack of) around like this, stoned on dilaudid, and being totally miserable.

Anybody gone through anything like this and know of anything I can ask the doc about?

[S. Kaul, MD]

Hi there!

Well, without an evaluation it would be difficult to point out the cause of your symptoms. Aside infection, possibilities that would need to be considered are inflammation, DVT, osteodystrophy, trauma/ injuries etc. You could discuss these in detail with your orthopedician. Meanwhile you may try ice-packs and some NSAIDS and see if these may help relieve your symptoms.
Hope this helps.

Take care!