Most home injuries after a stay happen between the bed and the toilet.

Roll onto your side first if you were told not to sit straight up. Drop the feet off the mattress, push the mattress with the arm that is allowed to work, and pause on the edge. Standing up in one motion from flat is how people get dizzy and meet the floor.

• Scoot to the edge until both feet are flat. Do not hunt for slippers in the dark.
• Nose over toes, then stand. Use the furniture they said you could use — not a spinning office chair.
• If you have a walker, it stands in front of you before you stand. Do not pull up on it.

Low toilets and high tub walls are the two pieces of house geometry that fight hip, knee, and abdominal precautions. A raised seat changes how far you have to fold. A transfer bench lets you sit outside the tub and slide in if showers are allowed. Neither one is a treatment. They are furniture.

Wet floors plus pain medicine is a predictable fall. A bath mat outside the tub is the cheapest control in the room. Grab bars belong in walls, not in tension rods you bought in a hurry — have someone who can install them if your team asked for them.

If dressing below the waist is the fight, a reacher and a sock aid are the usual kit. Practice once while someone is home, not at midnight. The shelf lists those tools with grades and limits.

Short, boring walks in the house are often the assignment. Adding distance because you feel restless is how swelling and fatigue show up the next morning. Use the aid you were fitted for. Borrowed crutches at the wrong height are a new problem.

• Stairs: the strong or unoperated leg typically leads going up; the operated or weaker leg typically leads going down — unless your PT wrote a different pattern.
• One step at a time until you are told otherwise. A handrail is not optional if it exists.
• Sit before you are exhausted. Recovery days are not the day to find your limit.