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I finally got brave enough. I now have a new knee.
Hello Everyone! So many little things have been going on over the past year, and a few big ones, so please forgive me if I play a little catch-up on the blog over the next while. I am home recovering and have the time and, hopefully, the energy to start blogging again. I certainly have a lot of ideas and experiences to share, and I will start with my latest joint replacement.
My knees have been bad for over 10 years, and I was scheduled to have my left knee replaced in January 2021. Unfortunately, I dislocated my hip under 3 weeks before I was to have the knee surgery, and then broke my other hip September 2021!
On May 19th, 2023, after a two year delay I finally got my brand new left knee.
My pain management was complicated because of allergies and my poor medication tolerance. I was in the hospital for 4 days while all that got sorted out. I have been home for almost a month and working on recovering.
The surgeon warned me from the beginning that this would be a rough recovery and that it could be much more painful than hip replacements. He also was very frank in saying that a large percentage of people are dissatisfied with the outcome of the surgery. Yup. Not reassuring. The nurse doing the presurgical orientation at the hospital a couple days before surgery was a little more optimistic. She said I would spend the first two weeks post-surgery thinking the knee surgery was the worst decision I ever made. She said that within 6 months to a year, I shall be glad that I made the decision to go ahead with the surgery.
I didn't feel like I didn't have much choice about going ahead with the surgery. My knee was very unstable and gave me pain daily. I reached a point where I was telling friends and family to go places and do things without me while I stayed home, which is not like me. My lower leg bowed out due to the knee collapsing inward. It was so severe that I started to have real trouble with my ankle. The doctor said I could eventually wind up needing an ankle repair.
The other consideration was that I had been on a shorter wait list with the physician because of the cancelled surgery. I was also on a health department priority list because my surgery that got cancelled when I dislocated my hip was also through the period of Covid when the hospital closed its surgical wings. I had postponed so long that I was about to get bumped to the end of the list, and it could be over two years before I got another chance. When talking to the surgeon, he said my knee was so severe and breaking down so fast that the surgery could get more complicated and result in a more difficult recovery.
Yes, this has been a pretty miserable recovery so far, and the exercises are more challenging than the hip ones were. The last two hip replacements were due to traumatic events, so the pain was probably worse than the average hip replacement. I am finding the pain level is not that different from what I experienced with the last surgeries and recoveries. Happily, this time, there was progress in finding workable solutions to pain management for me, so that helped at the beginning. In terms of managing my activities, it is a LOT better without restrictions about bending or living with the fear of another dislocation.
My life currently revolves around doing my physio exercises and icing my knee. More on that next time.
