On April 11th, I had an Arthroscopy proceedure done on my right knee. It’s been needing a repair since I hurt it running last November in New Zealand.
I’d had the same procedure done almost ten years ago on my left knee and it worked out fine then.  Minimum fuss and minimum hassle.
This time has been different. In the days after the surgery, my leg swelled up seriously and by the 10th day, I had blood pooling in my ankle area as evidenced by the large blue bruises on either side as if I’d sprained my ankle badly.
Of course I’ve quizzed myself as to why it should have been so different this time – other than the fact that I’m almost ten years older and 10 to 15 pounds heavier.
The clue, I believe was always there.  When I was in New Zealand sometime in December, I noticed that when I took my socks off in the evening, my shins above where the socks had gripped my legs, were swollen.   I have no idea how long they’d been like that. Noticing something like that just seems to creep up on me – hanging out there at the edge of consciousness until one day I consciously note it and idly wonder why it looks like that.  It could have been getting worse and worse for months. My wife says I’m fairly clueless about such things and she’s probably right.
In any case, when I went in to see my GP in March to start the process towards getting the Arthroscopy done, we discussed the leg swelling and he said that it can indicate, most commonly, heart of kidney problems.  I asked him to run what ever tests were necessary to confirm or preclude these and he did.  Blood work quickly showed that my kidney functions were fine.  Later, I had a visit with a Cardiologist and got to become a giant hamster and ran on a treadmill while an EKG machine watched my cardiac functions.  Then, when my heart was beating at about 140 beats per second, they slapped an ultrasound paddle on my chest and looked at my heart beating physically.  It was all good. 100% A-OK cardiac functions. I was glad about that.
But, it still left the swelling cause unknown. My GP tried me on diuretic pills for two weeks but I couldn’t see that they made much difference in the swelling.  He’d also told me that this just happens to some folks as they age for no known reason though more often to women than men.  The long and the short of it was that we decided to just let it be and pressed on for the Arthroscopy on the knee.  The doctor who was going to do the Arthroscopy had been appraised about the swelling and requested my kidney and cardiac test results – so he was in the loop as well.
Well, a four or five days after the Arthroscopy procedure, my sense was that I wasn’t healing as well as I thought I should.  Of course, in that situation, you have to wonder if your own impatience is interfereing with your judgement.  On day five or six, we noticed that I had a lot of bleeding under the skin on the back of my right thigh and I’d been noting for days that the muscles along the outside of that thigh were as tight as a drum and very painful to touch or use.  So, I called the doctor’s office to see if I could send them some digital photos and they could then decide if I was having abnormal symptoms or not. The nurse called back and declined the photos and said I could come in but also said that they clamp the leg at the thigh with a tourniquet during the surgery and that this can often semi-crush the muscle and lead to pain and some bleeding afterwards.  That reassured me so I let it go and continued to limp about.
I was taking three to four Percocets a day to deal with the pain and so that I could sleep.  And that’s an awful lot of pain medication for me.
On Thursday evening, on the 8th day, I noticed that my leg was swollen all the way down to and including the foot and that I had dark brusing marks on either side of my ankle indicating that blood was pooling there.  I decided to push to see the doctor the next day, Friday, rather than waiting through the weekend for my first scheduled follow up visit on Monday.
That same evening, as I wondered yet again what could be causing all these problems, it finally occurred to me that I’ve been taking blood pressure medicine, Diovan,and that it works by keeping your blood vessels from contracting. Something was beginning to click.
Earlier, my GP had told me that swelling like this is basically caused by the clear portion of the blood leaking out through the walls of the blood vessels into the muscles and such.  The real question, of course, is why the leakage occurs and that’s why we’d run the kidney and cardiac tests.  But now I was wondering if one of the possible side-effects of Diovan might be swelling due to it contributing to increased leakage. I stopped taking Diovan the next morning and went into see the Arthroscopy surgeon.
He said that my reaction was unusual but not all that rare and this kind of swelling just seems to happen to some folks after the surgery.  He was concerned however least I might have formed any blood clots which, if undetected, might break loose and form a blockage in the lungs or heart which can be fatal.  So we scheduled an ultrasound session that afternoon with a vascular laboratory to check this possibility out.   I told him my thoughts about the Diovan and he acknowledged that it might be possible but I don’t think he was deeply impressed by the idea.
The vascular ultrasound workup showed I was free of blood clots and everything was flowing fine so we went home.
Now, it is Saturday evening, at the end of day 10 and I’ve not been taking Diovan for 48 hours and my swelling has diminished significantly. I’ve also been getting by on half-Percocets rather than full tablets every six hours.
Is there a moral to this long medical ramble?
Well, I don’t think so.  At least, nothing definite.  Perhaps, Diovan aside, today just happened to be turn-around day and all my symptoms would have improved even if I’d continued to take the Diovan.  Maybe.   But, just a few minutes ago, I changed clothes and took my socks off for the first time today.  Virtually NO swelling above the sock-line.  And, it seems to me that the general swelling up and down my leg has decreased significantly as well.  My wife and I looked up Diovan on-line by Googling “Diovan Side Effects Swelling” and kicked out a lot of interesting stuff including some reputable sites which discuss drugs and side effects like these: ➡ ➡ :arrow:.
If I had it all to do over again, I would have dropped Diovan sometime ago to see if my leg swelling went away.  And, for sure, I would not have been taking it at the time of the surgery.
Diovan, and blood pressure control, for me, is not an imperative. I have what’s called border-line blood pressure and Cholesterol and my GP told me that long statistical studies had shown that people with these two together in borderline areas benefited by taking these drugs and lived a bit longer.  I was willing so long as I could afford them and they had no adverse effects.  Now, I’m going to have to rethink all that.
/medical-rant off