spare parts

The first week after knee replacement surgery is a haze. Pain meds every six hours. Weak attempts at exercising the new joint and incredibly swollen leg three times a day. It turns out that they weren't kidding about the effect of narcotics on the GI tract. And reading anything more complicated than a thriller is impossible.

The second week, the new knee moves better and hurts less. Pain meds every eight hours and walking around pushing a walker isn't so hard or as tiring.  Then it's twice a day for the pills and I went to the movies to see the new Star Wars.

The third week, I'm home and doing a lot more for myself. I feel better enough to feel bored. I can read with a brain again, so I'm reading the incredible A Brief History of Seven Killings, which I had tried to read in the hospital, right after surgery, but couldn't keep the different characters apart, even though James makes each voice distinct. Laine and I hang out. Sometimes she's watching tv and I'm reading. Sometimes we watch Netflix together, like Tangerine last night. The swelling is down so that my left side looks nearly normal-ish.

I was trying to get out of having the surgery until the month before. Earlier this year, like back in March or so, I had started using a cane. My left knee hurt that much. Then I started working out, concentrating on my leg muscles. Then I stopped using the cane (mainly because it is a nuisance to travel with). Then I tried to talk my doctor out of the necessity for the operation, but she said that my mobility would just get worse and worse.

In retrospect, I don't know what I was afraid of. That something horrible would happen on the operating table (it's not a table, it's like a very accommodating bed thing). That I would have a stroke? That it wouldn't work somehow? That it would hurt?

Well, it did/does hurt. But Kaiser is on it about pain management.  Nothing has been unbearable for long, not even the one night in the hospital, when it hurt to think about moving that leg. The team at the hospital was reassuring and answered any questions I even thought about having beforehand. Knowing what was happening and what would happen helped a lot. Having a good and cheery physical therapist who tells me I'm doing great helps a lot.

But when it comes down to it, I think it is that I thought (and my friends thought too) than I was too incapacitated. That I had been too inactive for too long and that recovery as going to be long and slow and hard and incomplete. That doesn't seem to be true. Maybe I can still make withdrawals on a lifetime of basically great health.

Whatever it is, I couldn't have done it without the support of two retired friends who volunteered their house and their time to be my rehab residency or without the support of the the world's best gf. With them, I can be here at home, bored out of my mind, watching a cat watching the turkeys promenade through the side yard.