does swelling prevent exercise?

My PS said I could start training for a marathon on Jan 1st and my surgery is Oct 28th.  However, I keep reading about swelling and how it can take months or a year to go away completely.  Is the swelling just a minor deal after the initial couple of months or is it something that will prevent me from running, biking, and swiming?  I have several events to train for in 2011 starting in January.   I picked Oct 28th as my date because Nov and Dec are the only two months that I could afford to be "down".

What is your opinion?  Thank you so much for the advice!!

The swelling won't prevent you from training. Once you are a couple of monhs out the swelling usually is minimal and only bothersome in your appearance. Some find that exercise will increase the swelling.

Thanks so much for the input!

I am 4 months post op and starting back to exercising tomorrow. A few thoughts:

--I'm going to exercise in the morning, since that is when the swelling is less

--sweating makes my incisions itch, so I gotta come up with something to counteract that

--no one can predict how you will swell; some swell significantly, some hardly at all. I would not call my swelling insignificant, as it makes me very uncomfortable by days end. I feel like I am wearing REALLY TIGHT panties and the tops of my thighs/hips become numb.

--I have heard exercise makes swelling worse; if so, I will adjust workout plan accordingly.

A friend has asked me to consider a marathon in March; don't think I'll do the whole thing but thinking maybe a smaller portion of it. How long do you generally give yourself to fully train for a full marathon?

So how did your first day back at exercising go?  Just curious.  I trained from Jan 1 until April 24th this year to do a half marathon.  I havent' done a full yet.  Was thinking of doing it in 2011 but after everything I am hearing on this board I do not think that is realistic.

So far, so good....I will wait to see how the swelling is at the end of the day and report back!

I was surprised; I thought I was gonna have to start from the beginning and work back up my endurance. But I was able to run for longer stretches than I thought I would.

Thank you so much for sharing your personal training schedule.  That helps me put this in perspective.  I don't believe he has done any other athletes because he commented on how this was the first patient he had that was scheduling surgery between training events.  The marathon is in April, then I bike across the state of Oklahoma in June so I thing for sure I will be good to go on that one.  The triathlong season is in August and September so it sounds like I should be getting back to normal by then hopefully.

After my first round of surgery, my ps gave me the go ahead at week 4 to start with cardio.  I worked out for a week, getting almost back to my race pace for walking.  During that week, I had very little swelling after working out.  See my siggy for what I had done when.

After that week, I went in for my second round of surgery.  My ps didn't let me start working out until week 5, which was last week.  And it then it was to ease back into everything slowly.  My legs, especially the calf of my right leg swells a lot.  It goes back down quick enough but it is very noticable.

Does it stop me?  No.  It's part of the process and I know how to manage it.  If it were not a good idea, my ps would have given me different instructions.  When I mentioned trapeze school, once he realized I was serious, he did tell me to wait awhile for that activity.

There are a few races I'd like to do later in the year (Turkey Trot, Jingle Bell Run, etc) but nothing hardcore any time soon.

I am so encouraged to hear you think you might be able to do a coupleof 5Ks by this fall.  That is awesome!  I am sad that I will miss this year's turkey trot and jingle run but I am so ready to get this giant pouch thing off of me.  When I bike and look down it is so embarrasing to see this junk.  I swear sometimes I imagine just chopping it off myself! LOL 

You look great by the way!!  Very inspirational.