TKA: The Saga Continues

I received some good column writing advice many years ago…some advice I’ve tried to always follow. The late great Jim Dykes told me “write where you’re at.” Works for me. For 35 years.


Well today, I’m in the middle of recuperating and rehabilitating from knee replacement surgery. I told you about all that last week. I thought I might update you later but this is pretty much my whole world right now. This is “where I’m at.”


Every moment is consumed with getting through this, getting better, and getting back to some degree of normalcy. But I have to tell you, this thing has been a bear. Dr. Jones tried to tell me that it was not going to be much fun. He tried to tell me that it was painful but I thought I was tough. And when I started whining, he reminded me that he spent an extra hour just chopping away bone and bad stuff.


I originally had thoughts of going home on the day of my surgery. THAT wasn’t happening. I had these thought I would get a new knee and be back to work in a few days. Huh-uh. Wasn’t gonna happen. So now I’m working every day on moving my leg, walking, exercising, going to physical therapy, and, yes, simply recuperating.


Simple tasks take more energy. Sleep doesn’t come easy. I’m still using crutches to get around (I was NOT going to use that walker thing). And then there’s that whole thing about “staying ahead of the pain.” I didn’t really understand that at all. Everybody told me about that. Told me how important it was.


But I was different. I was tougher than most. At least I thought I was. I learned that lesson the hard way the first night home after surgery.


I had been functioning at a high level on this piece of junk knee for well over 10 years. I could do everything but run. Until this year, my wife and I had taken a big hiking trip every fall for many years. Oh, I knew it was time. There were days when the knee would ache and I would think “find Dr. Griffith and a surgical suite and we will fix this thing right now.” I knew I was taking way too much anti-inflammatory medication.


Most of that was because I could still ride my bike. It hurt occasionally but for the most part, I could ride without any trouble at all. I’ve spent a lot of years getting to a decent level of proficiency on the bike and I knew that a gap in my riding that a knee replacement would demand would mean that I wouldn’t be able to ride like I did for a long time.


That’s important to me. Not because I want to be faster than most. And I’m not really very competitive on the bike. That has nothing to do with it. A lot of my very best friends are those people I ride bikes with. Steve, Maysoun, Bob, Emil, Ken, Clay, Tim, Clark, and on. There is a friendship, a camaraderie among bikers that is like nothing else.


You’ve got to like each other. You’ve got to trust each other. You’ve got to support each other. When one person goes down, we all hurt. When one person gets a flat, we all stop. It’s a fellowship that I don’t get in many other places.


For now, that’s gone. Oh, I know I will be back. I know I will catch up. But there’s a gap in my life, in my psyche from that absence. So now I work. I don’t believe anyone can say (yet) that I’ve been anything but an exemplary patient. Despite leanings this way in the past, I am dedicated to not do anything stupid.


I want to close with some advice, both personal and professional. If you’ve been putting this thing off, reconsider. I waited ten years too long and because of that, this has been much harder than it needed to be. Although I’m not quite there yet, almost every patient I’ve ever rehabbed for this has ended up saying “if I had it to do over again, I would have had it done a long time ago.”


I’m sort of counting on that.