Post Surgery: End of Week 3 and Good Riddance!

Thursday, June 13

Here it is, the end of week 3, and, oh, week 3?  Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

This was a hard one.  In fact, for the last few days, I’ve been hearing Bob Dylan singing:

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

The first couple of weeks were hard, too, but at least there were mileposts along the way.  Getting the surgery done.  Walking for the first time on my new bionic knee.  Getting the first hospital PT done.  Getting out of the hospital and home to my own comforts, albeit a day later than planned.  Getting started with the outpatient PT, every other day.  Friends visiting, calls, and all those positive vibes.  Looking forward to that ever-so-important two-week post-surgery checkup, getting rid of the super-annoying TED stockings, replacing the waterproof wound covering with eight little steri-strips.  Getting into the routine of icing, elevating, doing the PT, getting in several short little walks every day.

But after week two, then what?  This past week has been a major downer.  It’s a hard, lonely business, this recovering business.  It feels like it’s always time for the next round of PT, and, well, parts of the PT are just freaking painful, and it’s just hard to do that multiple times a day.  I’ve been doing so well in the outpatient PT that Lindsey (remember, the Gestapo?) told me I don’t need to come three times a week any longer;  two times is fine, thank you very much.  So that’s a relief from a scheduling standpoint, but, well, jeez, that was one of my few social interactions.  I’m tired from not sleeping, and I’m tired of not sleeping.  Those Sleep Intervals (actually more like waking intervals) are wearing on me.  I’ve lost the ability to nap during the day, so I am a walking zombie.  I’m tired of being so totally dependent, even though everyone (especially Ed) has been so generous with doing stuff, bringing stuff, picking up prescriptions, offers of help.  I’m tired of being dependent on drugs, and tired of the Catch-22 of the pain meds:  you can’t really heal if you are in immense pain and if you aren’t getting proper rest, but the pain meds make it impossible to get good rest.

It’s all a bit like marathon training.  At first, you sign up for the race, and you’re excited.  Woohoo - I’m finally gonna do this thing!  And the first few weeks of the training schedule are very manageable, and you celebrate every time you run a new, longest distance.  People ask how it’s going, and by gum, you’re doing great.  Haven’t missed a workout yet, and you’re sleeping well because of all the exercise.  But then the runs get longer, and it takes longer to recover.  Sleep gets harder, because your muscles just ache.  And you have to follow the freaking run schedule every freaking day, or you won’t be ready on time.  That means running in the rain, and the cold, and the heat, and on days when you’d rather just go out for a beer after work than to go slog out another nine miles on that same old route you just ran a day ago.  The race is still a ways off, and it feels like it is going to take a monumental effort to just get to the starting line intact.  But the only way to get through it is to just get through it.  In the world of marathoning, there are no doubt countless folks who have given up because this phase is just so very tough, and have never made it to the starting line.  In the case of this new knee, there are few choices.  Either I do the PT and get through the pain and get out of this with the best bionic knee possible, or I do a half-assed job and end up with a stiff, unbending knee that never really approaches the potential.  That’s pretty much missing the starting line.

So on it goes.  Here’s to starting Week 4 with a new resolve and better attitude.  I’m going to work on getting Warren Zevon and “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” out of my head.  One of the things I’m most tired of is the fact that all of the police in my life (Ed, PT Lindsey, PA Heather) have limited my walking to what is, IMHO, a pittance.  No more than two walks a day that are hardly a block and a half long.  But Doug just stopped by to remind me that I should listen to these cops.  And Doug knows:  he had a total knee replacement five or six years ago.  He did not have the guidance I do, and he totally overdid his activities, and then had to have the same knee revised a few years later.  When he says, “Don’t Overdo It!”, he speaks with authority.  No way do I ever want to have to go through this process again.

Plus, Doug brought a book that he promises will have me laughing out loud.  If that doesn’t work, I’ll go back to binge watching the Great British Baking Show, and having a laugh whenever I tell Siri to turn on the ice machine and she responds with stuff like “Gotcha!”  And when all else fails, I’ll look at my recovering scar, and work on generating the grace to appreciate how far I’ve come in the last three weeks.