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As I am master of this blog, this will be one of my non-art blog entries. I think I only stray away from painting topics once a year or so, so feel free to skip over to something else if it is not your cup of tea.

Today is Day 10 following surgery to replace my right knee with the latest artificial high tech titanium "result of collaboration between scientists, universities, engineers and surgeon opinion leaders from all over the world...provided to more than 1 million people worldwide since 2011." I'm not certain I should have placed my trust in a manufacturer which cannot distinguish between individuals such as scientists and engineers and collective non-organic entities such as universities, but too late now.  

What I will now delve into are the impatient rantings of somebody only a week and a half into a three month journey and basically being a cry-baby about it. Ready or not, here I go.

It's the opposite of a colonoscopy. On steroids.

A colonoscopy is a very unpleasant event you sleep through. The really unenjoyable part is the day before, in which you ingest the worst tasting stuff on planet earth in order to spend a day on the toilet. Knee surgery is a very unpleasant event you sleep through. The unenjoyable part takes place once the anesthesia wears off and you ingest hospital food, think "No sweat, I'll be up and at 'em in no time," and then find out that fate keeps a very different clock than you do.

They didn't tell me I'd look like Henry VIII

My particular surgeon and hospital include provision in the discharge papers to wear compression stockings (TEDS) on both legs as a preventative measure against blood clots. I am not a small man, and these confounded things make me look like Henry VIII, so much so that my wife suggests it as a Halloween costume. TEDS are a device of torture which have given me fuller appreciation as to why panty-hose seem to be a thing of the past. I am scouring the internet for a reason - any reason - to justify stopping wearing these things. Sadly, blood clot = stroke risk and TEDS = really uncomfortable and cranky wearer. No contest.

They weren't clear that I'd need a calculator to describe my pain levels.

"How's your pain today?" An interesting and useful question the first four thousand times it is asked. You come of out surgery pumped full of anesthesia and being cheerfully dispensed hard core opioids and you have to zero in on where you stand on a 1-10 pain scale. It begins with no pain and ends with "This couldn't hurt more if I was literally on fire." In the early going, it's not too difficult to look heavenward for a second or two and then proclaim "Six" as though announcing a commandment. To me six would be the peak of an ice cream headache if it were unending. To somebody else six might be "Well, imagine screwing a piece of titanium into your bone with some long-ass screws and then waiting the however many weeks it takes for your bone to reestablish itself and your white blood cells to finally give up the fight and go grab a beer somewhere." An imprecise science.

Moreover, the generic "how's your pain?" question over time becomes meaningless. After nine days of pain medicine, physical therapy, and dreaming the impossible dream of becoming comfortable, the list of what hurts includes (i) the 12" long scar with its neat row of staples running vertically down the front of your leg, (ii) the vague "inside" of your knee with its complement of metal affixed to bone with railroad spikes and some 47 thousand equally pissed off muscles, nerves, tendons, ligaments, and blood vessels, (iii) the somewhat less vague outside of your knee, with its continuum of swelling, (iv) your ass, which has developed the wide range of proto-bedsores more usually associated with eleven hour flights in economy seating, (v) your hip, which just does not like what the physical therapy for your knee is doing to it, (vi) your legs, which have had so much compression stocking irritation they are ready to go on strike, and (vii) your spouse, whose saintliness is being stretched to the limit having to attend to a 61 year old toddler. They didn't tell me that the question "how's your pain?" would require doing a bunch of arithmetic in my head just to come up with "Oh, maybe a 3, I guess."

Here's something else they don't tell you about the pain: it's not just the Frankenstein scar and the railroad spikes. They use a tourniquet on your thigh during surgery and that mother must be tighter than the bark on a tree because when the anesthesia begins to wear off on Day Two - YOWZA!

Relearning everything

One of the many things that led me to the decision it was time to replace the knee was the realization that I had been - all unawares - babying it for years. This in turn led to a variety of bad habits which affected my feet and hips. The upshot is that not only do I need to learn to walk again, I need to correct all the ingrained bad habits. So it's not just doing the PT work, it requires concentration to point my feet the way nature wants me to point them rather than reestablishing what had become normal to me. On the fun scale, this is a big-ass no fun. But necessary.

The old cartoons were right

In old cartoons (Bugs Bunny, the Flintstones), a standard gag is to show somebody - an expectant father is typical - pacing back and forth so much they create a trough in the floor. I have not been pacing, but I have been walking back and forth through the den, kitchen and breakfast nook enough that I swear the beginnings of a trough are visible. I'm using a walker, of course, but have reached a point that I can pick it up and carry it along with me, so yay.

Annnnndddd.....

They didn't tell me that in trying to get to sleep I would at times look like a reenactment of U.S.S. Caine during the storm that led to the mutiny.

They didn't tell me to expect one step forward two steps back so frequently while doing the PT, sometimes in the same day.

They didn't tell me that pooping would become a tactical chess exercise. 

The most significant thing they didn't tell me is that I do get better a little bit everyday, and that's a good thing. In other words, don't take any of this ranting too seriously. It's just my way of blowing off steam.