Knee Capped

Here follows another of Mary's medical posts. If you are getting tired of them, imagine how I feel.

This time I had knee replacement surgery. For some years my right leg has been so twisted and the knee what my surgeon described as 'bone on bone' that I have been much restricted in taking to the bush. Last spring I signed up for knee surgery to see if I could not only get the knee fixed, but also help the spasms in my lower back brought on, in part, by my walking like a duck.

This spring I finally got on the list and trudged in to the hospital in late March to get my knew knee. {Sorry!) What they do is chop out the old one. put in a nice new metal three piece and sew you up again.

Then you get to stay over in the hospital a day while you get some weight-bearing back and limp off home, where you should have pre-equipped yourself with a walker, elastic support stockings and someone to look after you. You have a fine seam, in my case stapled shut, on your knee, considerable bruising, and the elastic stockings quickly cause all the top layer of skin from your ankle up to turn into confetti. Also, it hurts. (Please feel free to imagine the word "ouch" frequently interspersed in this post). Oh yes,you also have pages of exercises that you are supposed to do many times each day, including lying with your leg propped on four or five pillows.

In my case, my husband cooks, cleans and critiques with great skill. He had a knee replacement himself quite some time ago, but avers that he can't remember much about it. I have a reclining chair with electric controls, a good iPad and neighbours who bring bags of magazines. All set.

I quickly found that the walker was a [censored] pain to use. If I wanted to carry anything, I had to push it ahead of me with one hand. Not too useful. So I moved to a cane and that worked pretty well. It even allowed me to get organized enough to bring my poor husband his morning coffee in bed, provided I used a cup with a cover. The support stockings are a pain. They hurt going on, they hurt coming off and you have to wash the damn things out all the time. The exercise sheet was more than daunting. Like, owie. However, bags of frozen peas and flexible ice packs are very, very useful.

After two weeks you trek back to the hospital, (in our case over washed out gravel roads that bounce the knee around severely) and they get the staples out, check for infection and give you more pages of exercises. Note, if you are contemplating having this surgery, that three weeks of pain, and pain killers that don't work as well as you want them to, are standard. Plus, none of your trousers will fit over the bandages. Get a very soft track suit.

What I did not think about ahead of time, but should have, is that if it is your right knee, you are not allowed to drive for six (6!) weeks. So your someone to look after you has to drive you to all your physiotherapy appointments, doctors' appointments and anywhere else you need to go. Roads getting more and more washed out. [Insert ouch]

Did I mention cabin fever in there anywhere.

Anyway, I am now past the five week mark, have ditched the stockings and the cane except for walking outside, am cleared onto the exercise bike and am looking forward to getting my wheels back and getting on with my life. Or, perhaps, I should say getting back to my life. If it were not for my best coffee friend, I would probably be writing this from a locked ward.

And yesterday my therapist told me that I was walking straight all wrong, backwards in fact, and gave me another sheet of exercises. [Insert curse word of your choice].