Where It Begins

Bee's knees.
Take a knee.
Knee to the groin.
Down on one knee.
Hands and knees.
Knee-high by the 4th of July.
Knee replacement.

Wait....what? Knee replacement?  Me?  But I'm just barely (barely!) 56!  But....

My recent trip to Spain was great - lots of seeing & doing & talking & eating & walking - and limping & hurting & consuming mass quantities of Advil. For a couple of days after I got back it seemed better.  But by Thursday of that week, I could tell it really wasn't. I called Novotny's office and was lucky to get an appointment for the following day.

I was sent for xrays since it has been over a year since they were last done.  Oddly, they were no better than last time - can you imagine?!  He told me, once again, that I really need a new knee.  I am really not willing to consider that right now.  It just seems like I am too young.

I was telling him that I have a new symptom, a feeling of swelling (but nothing visible) that is sometimes so bad that it feels like my leg is going to explode.  Not all the time, but when it is there, it is really bad.  So bad it makes me want to cry, desperate to make it stop!  I've noticed that it happens after I swim, unless I ice it right away when I get home.  He said I have what's called a Baker's cyst, which leaks and fills the joint with fluid.  Because it's been a couple of years since I last had one, he said a cortisone shot might help.

Ow.  Easily the most painful one I've ever had, but it started helping almost immediately.  I asked - only half-kidding - about the possibility of a cortisone IV, but he said no.

For three weeks, all was well.  The knee only hurt occasionally, I swam without pain.  Then week four began.  Almost as quickly as it had gotten better after the shot, it all went bad. I think I kind of tried to deny it, but when I walked into Meijer and had to stop, halfway to the back of the store, to let the intense pain wash over me, I knew I needed to go back to the doctor.

In the couple of days until I could get in, I agonized over the options.  I had read a little about Baker's cysts, and it said they don't remove them because they just come back.  But what if they don't come back for five years?  Couldn't that at least get me a little older before I have to consider anything else?  How about they just remove it and see?

However - that was not an option. He said I could either try the gel-type stuff that they inject, or get a new knee.  When I started to say, once again, that I didn't want that, he said, "I don't know what you want me to tell you."  I said I wanted him to tell me he had a magic wand he could wave to make it all better.  The magic wand, it turns out, is called an "artificial knee".  So I said OK.  Kind of.

They gave me a packet of information and told me what the process would be, then I went home to mull it all over.  I will have a CT scan that will be used to create a custom guide to be put on my leg in surgery to determine the exact placement of the hardware.  It takes six weeks to make the guide after the CT.

I spent about a week thinking about the best possible timing, still halfway unsure that I really wanted to do it at all.  Then I had a couple of really bad days.  I had worked a show at BCPA (Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts), spending about 2.5 hours, total, on my feet.  Still, by the end of the show, I could barely make it to my car, only a block away.  I had to stop twice on the way, and then I wasn't sure I could get down the tiny slope to the parking lot.  OK, that's enough!

I finally made up my mind and called the office to set it up - Sept 5, the Wednesday after Labor Day.
That will give me two months to get the small bedroom cleaned out, painted, and furnished so that I can sleep there for awhile (and avoid the stairs).  Having a deadline will force me to get it done!

So this journal will be all about the journey through New Kneeland.  I'm still a little ambivalent sometimes, excited sometimes, but not yet really looking forward to it.  Give me a few bad weeks and ask me again.  I have been gathering wisdom from people who have gone before me, and I intend to make use of all of it. I also will keep swimming.  I have said that I'm swimming to keep my knee.  Now I guess I'm swimming to use it up.  :)