I'm an Official Hippy, Surgery by Dr. Snyder

[Arrojo]

Hi PistolPete,
With that much swelling traveling down your leg, you might want to consider whether you have been spending enough time elevating your lower leg. Gravity is a pretty powerful force, and if you are upright a lot, all that fluid is going to get pulled down.
Also, are you doing a lot of ankle pumps. I was told that you cannot do too many of these. The calf muscles are sometimes called the second heart, because their contractions are what pumps the blood back up from the lower legs to the heart. When you have a lot of fluid collecting down there, ankle pumps are what gets it moving back up. For the first week or so, I did them whenever I was sitting and awake.

John C, what are ankle pumps?

[John C]

Hi Arrojo,
Ankle pumps are nothing fancy, but very important post surgery. It is simply flexing your ankle up and down repeatedly. The reason this is so important is that it flexes and relaxes the calf muscle, which pumps blood back up out of the lower leg towards the heart. This helps with swelling, and helps to avoid clots. In normal daily life this is taken care of by the calf muscles flexing when we walk, but post surgery, the ankle pumps have to serve this important role.