The Before & After Surgery Toolkit: A Calm, Step-by-Step Guide

Surgery is one day. How you prepare and how you recover shape the rest. Our free Before & After Surgery Toolkit walks you through 12 steps: prehab, the questions to ask, your home, the warning signs, food for healing, swelling and scars, and getting back to life.

MK Wellness InsightsFounded by Danielle Cordova, Cypress, TX

Whether it's a knee, a heart, a tummy tuck, or a C-section, surgery asks a lot of your body. The weeks before and after are a powerful window. Going in stronger, calmer, and well fed helps you heal, and good support afterward helps you get back to life sooner. Hospitals know this too: Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) programs are built on exactly that.

The Before & After Surgery Toolkit walks you through it one step at a time. Your surgeon's instructions always come first.

Open the interactive toolkit, or download the free PDF to print and keep in your surgery folder.

How to Use It

• Choose where you are: surgery coming up, the first two weeks after, or weeks 2 to 12. The toolkit shows the first six steps to take.
• Tick each box as you go. Your checkmarks save on your phone or computer.
• Print your questions for your pre-op visit, with room to write the answers.

Surgery Coming Up? Start Here

1. Walk every day, a little farther each week, as your surgeon allows.
2. Eat protein at every meal. Healing tissue is built from protein.
3. Stop smoking and vaping now. People who quit about 4 weeks or more before surgery have fewer complications, and every extra week helps (WHO).
4. Bring every bottle (medicines, vitamins, herbs, and supplements) to your pre-op visit.
5. Ask which ones to stop, and when. Anesthesiologists often advise stopping herbal supplements about 2 weeks before surgery, and fish oil, vitamin E, turmeric, garlic, and ginkgo can affect bleeding.
6. Stock easy, protein-rich meals and set up your recovery space.

The 12 Steps at a Glance

1. Get organized. A surgery folder, a helper, and time off planned.
2. Get stronger before surgery. Walking, strength, breathing, protein, steady blood sugar, no smoking, and a dental checkup.
3. Medicines and supplements. What to pause, including what to know if you take a GLP-1 medicine like Ozempic or Mounjaro.
4. Questions for your surgical team. Your pain plan, your blood clot plan, and when you can shower, drive, lift, and start recovery therapies.
5. Get your home ready. Meals, things within reach, a safe path to the bathroom, and comfort gear.
6. Surgery day. What to bring, and why to pack headphones and calming music.
7. The first two weeks. The warning signs, walking early, breathing exercises, pain and constipation, and incision care.
8. Food for healing. Protein, color, zinc, water, and steady blood sugar.
9. Swelling, lymph, and scars. Compression, gentle lymphatic work once cleared, silicone for scars, and sun protection.
10. Getting back to life. Physical therapy, a gradual return, driving, mood, and when heat and water are okay again.
11. Your MK protocol. What we do before surgery and after your surgeon clears you.
12. Help and resources. Trusted guides from anesthesiologists, surgeons, and the FDA.

Two Things to Know

Music helps. In a review of 73 trials, music before and after surgery reduced pain and anxiety and lowered the need for pain medicine (The Lancet, 2015). Pack your headphones.

Know when to call. Call 911 for chest pain, sudden shortness of breath, coughing up blood, or fainting. Call your surgeon right away for a fever, spreading redness, swelling, pus or a bad smell from your incision, calf pain or swelling in one leg, or pain that keeps getting worse.

Our view: your body was designed to heal. Prepare it like an athlete before a big event, protect it like something precious afterward, and give it time. The work you do on either side of surgery day is some of the most important healing work there is.

Where MK Wellness Fits

We love working alongside surgical teams. Before surgery, clients use mild hyperbaric oxygen, red light, PEMF, EWOT, and our Sound Lounge to build fitness and calm nerves. After their surgeon clears them, we support swelling, circulation, and rest with red light, PEMF, mild hyperbaric oxygen, the lymphatic roller, and compression boots. Heat and water wait until incisions have fully healed. Read our full guide, Before and After Surgery, and see our Pre & Post Surgery protocol.

When you need something we don't offer, we connect you with people we trust. If you're exploring regenerative options before or after orthopedic surgery, we refer our clients to Dr. Tina Hills, D.O., and her practice, PHMX. She now sees clients under our roof a few days a week.

Questions? Call or text us at (346) 805-8928.

Go Deeper

• The Before & After Surgery Toolkit (interactive) and the PDF
• Before and After Surgery
• Why We've Moved Past RICE
• American Society of Anesthesiologists: Made for This Moment
• ERAS Society

MK Wellness services are non-medical and not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition. This guide and the toolkit are general education and deliberately include no doses or protocols. They do not replace your surgical team's instructions. Always get your surgeon's clearance before starting any therapy around your procedure, and contact your surgeon or emergency services right away for any concerning symptoms. MK Wellness and PHMX are two separate, independent businesses.

The Pre & Post Surgery Protocol at MK Wellness

We build this goal around modalities that work better together. The core of the protocol:

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