I’ve been listening to a lot of knee replacement stories lately. One guy told me he had his replaced 30 years ago. It took him six months to recover. Then he had to have it done again 10 years later. This time his recovery took twice as long. A neighbor refuses to have it done for fear of a similar ordeal.
What occasioned these discussions was the fact that I had a recent knee replacement. Thanks to my physical therapist, who forced me to start riding my exercise bike on the second day, I was walking unaided around the house in a week, and in two weeks, around the neighborhood. I was driving and climbing stairs in five weeks.
In six weeks, I trekked across a local state park for 2.5 hours. If this sounds like bragging, you’re right, but not on my behalf, on behalf of my surgical team and the medical profession. Things have come a long way in the last 30 years.
My surgeon used a computer-guided laser to ensure that both sections of the knee joint were perfectly aligned with the bones. Apparently, premature knee failure is due primarily to poor alignment, forcing one knuckle of the artificial knee or the other to take most of the weight. This causes rapid wear.
A second knee replacement results in more trauma to the leg than the first, as it requires more radical surgery, but second knee replacements are rare these days thanks to the significant improvements in procedures, design, and materials.
My knee replacement surgery was done as an outpatient procedure. I was in and out of the hospital in seven hours. Because they used superb numbing agents, I was able to walk to the car afterwards unaided except for a walker. I felt so good, I asked Lady Di to stop for a beer on the way home (she wouldn’t hear of it).
The next day was the toughest day of the whole experience. That’s when the numbing agents wore off. It wasn’t intolerable because I had prescription pain killers and we’d rented a Game Ready machine. Professional athletes use them for a quick recovery.
It’s a rubber sleeve which wraps around your leg, fastens with Velcro, blows up like an air mattress to apply compression, and circulates cold water around your knee. Very soothing. Without it, I wouldn’t have slept for the first few nights.
A Game Ready GRPro 2.1 portable therapy unit.
After six days, the relief it provided was no longer necessary, so it was returned.
As for pain killers, I used Oxycodone only once. It turned me into a zombie. I felt like I’d undergone a lobotomy. Tramadol was plenty strong enough and I stopped using that after a month.
It says right on the bottle not to combine Tramadol with alcohol, but what the hell, some friends dropped by to wish me well and I felt fine, so we had a few toasts.
Then I went to the restroom and almost passed out. I decided to lay down for a few minutes and that’s the last my friends saw of me that day.
I slept well though.
Header image courtesy of Shopify AI.
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