I Didn’t Drop Off the Face of the Earth: Just Fixed My Bum Knee

August 23, 2020 – Many of my readers and contributors have been asking about my status since they haven’t seen a posting to this blog site since mid-July. Well I want to assure you that I did not suffer a demise from COVID-19. That my atrial fibrillation caused by COVID has not contributed further to my health challenges. Rather, it was the long-awaited knee replacement surgery that finally happened that has led to the current hiatus.

Knee replacement surgery isn’t just about removing the osteoarthritic joint and replacing it with a prosthetic. It’s all about what happens after. The rehabilitation is a full-time job and I have been going at it since the day after surgery with flexing of the joint, straightening it, and doing muscle strengthening exercises to get my body back in balance.

The surgery had some surprises. It turns out the tibia, the weight-bearing lower bone in my left leg had undergone significant changes over the 50 years that followed an accident I experienced at age 19. At that time it took three surgical procedures to restore my leg so that I could walk without a cane or other aids. But in doing the repair my body decided to begin redistributing bone mass from the head of the tibia to the middle area where the multiple breaks had occurred.

Fifty years later the upper part of the tibia had become soft, demineralized and decalcified, and my patella, the knee bone, had corroded. So the surgeon did some rebuilding with pins and cement and that to some degree has slowed my recovery progress from the norm.

This is the first time I am sitting at my desk and writing about the experience. I am using a walker, and occasionally two canes, to get about. The walker gives me better weight distribution as I walk easing the strain on my hip abductor muscles as I try to rebuild them to manage my new knee and gait. And because this is the first time sitting at the desk for a period of time, I’m cognizant of the need to get up and move, flex and straighten the knee joint so that it doesn’t stiffen.

So this posting will be short. Consider it a placeholder for up and coming postings of which I have many lined up, some from contributors, some that I was working on before the surgery, and others that I have been working through in my head as I have gone through these five weeks of rehabilitation.

As always, I appreciate you visiting my blog site and hope to have you reading and commenting on future postings here.