I’m not sure what I expected to happen after my total knee replacement. I know I was afraid of the pain and feared the physical therapy. The night before the surgery, I posted on Facebook,

Tomorrow should be interesting. I’m having a total knee replacement, and I hope this Mako Robot knows what he is doing.

I had forty-seven comments telling me everything would be fine with lots of good wishes. What surprised me the most was how many people I went to high school with who had already had the surgery.

As promised before surgery, a physical and occupational therapist showed up three hours after surgery and attempted to get me to walk. Unfortunately, my blood pressure had another idea and dropped to 88/64. With this development, there went the original idea of me going home that afternoon, and I ordered lunch.

Later the next day, I was able to pass all the tests of standing up, walking to and from the bathroom, and going up and down four steps. With these accomplishments, I was discharged and sent home.

Darrell had purchased a quad cane for me to use to get from the car to the inside of the house. Once in the house, I grab my newly purchased walker that was going to be my new best friend for the next several weeks. Other than being extremely tired, this new knee wasn’t causing too many problems. Of course, the pain was being held at bay with some great meds.

In-home physical therapy was scheduled to start two days later. Showered with hair and make-up ready, I greeted my physical therapist with great fear. I had heard stories that they can be quite brutal with an attitude of “we got to get this knee working.” Within a few minutes, my fears were put to rest, as I find out all we are going to do is simple stretches for the first few days.

By the third day home, I had had it with the walker and ditched it, and shortly thereafter, the cane. I never got the handle of how to use the cane and felt most of the time I was going to trip over it.

My in-home therapist told me I was ahead of the curve, and I explained to her I don’t do sick or helplessness well.

Two weeks after surgery, I went back to the surgeon to have my stitches removed. The thought of this terrified me. I’ve had stitches removed before, and it hurts. As his nurse removes the bandages, I can’t look. Darrell decides to take pictures. Suddenly the nurse makes two snips and says, “Ok, we’re all done, the doctor will be in shortly.”

“We are done, what about all of the other stitches?” I ask.

“You only have two.”

With this news, I decide it’s now safe for me to look at my knee. All I see are twelve white inch and a half by half an inch steri-strips. I’m not sure whether I was more surprised or startled, but I turned to Darrell and said, “My knee is being held together with twelve steri-strips?” Feeling the same way, he responds, “Looks that way.”