Me And The Knee(s)

Vince put little piles of hay around the yard for Max and he'd go from one to the other all day

Diane at the post office said it was a lovely DAY and I said "only 11 more DAYs until I get my new knees".  I can't even have a conversation these days without relating it to my knees!*

My big day went from being March 12 to March 15 when I told my surgeon I'd decided I wanted to do both knees at the same time.  He caught himself midway through a sigh of exasperation and rolled with it.  It would be like someone who was getting 50 cycling jerseys, during our VOmax days, calling to say they wanted to double their order.  He should be psyched. 

The thought of having no legs for a while is a bit overwhelming, albeit all part of the 'big adventure', but when I went to my 'joint class' and the surgeon started telling the group of 30 or so (the hip people were in there with us) that we had to stop taking vitamins a week before surgery; anti-inflammatories, 10 days before; no dental work, even cleanings, for 6 months following.....then there were the catheters, infections, EKGs, blood tests, special soaps........I knew I wouldn't be able to keep track of all that stuff twice so even though I may have a tough first couple of weeks, I have no second thoughts about 'doing' both.

Whether it was my meloxicam (the anti-inflammatory that is like the one we give Max) or that my knee has been swollen so hard for so long that it's all stretched out, my pain has become pretty tolerable and I've been able to ski almost everyday (skiing is easier than walking) so I hope no one spent too much time feeling sorry for me thinking I was just sitting on the couch.**

I'm not sure I'd ever really stood and looked at myself in a full length mirror before (mostly because we didn't have a full length mirror until now) but I wanted to see what my knees looked like head on.  I noticed my right knee was a bit knocked and my right hip was a tad skewed.  Hmmmm.   I was pretty sure, even without a mirror to prove it back then, that I used to be straight up and down.  I dug out a photo of me a few years ago standing on a beach in a little bathing suit and you could see that, sure enough, I was straight.  So.  I put on the same little bathing suit, stood on the concrete floor instead of the beach and took a photo of my skewed hip and knee.  I ganged the before and after shots and sent them to the surgeon.  For my own peace of mind I need to send them.  I was going to email them but thought he might delete them as porn.  Before my great idea of wearing the same little bathing suit, for continuity and a straight forward comparison, I was thinking I could take an au natural shot, encompassing the hip and knee, then photoshop a four leaf clover or something over the crotch area.  Whatever...I don't think I'm going in for my fix a minute too soon.

I used to have a thigh muscle

*I started another blog.  A journal.  Just knee talk.  Boring unless your knees hurt a lot and even then it's not all the interesting.
**how does all that food get UNDER the cushions?