Wednesday, September 9, 2009

New Knees

For the last few years I have been experiencing a lot of pain in my knees. I had arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn meniscus in the left knee and it looked like it was going to be needed in the right knee.

On July 30th I had bilateral total knee joint replacement. Yes, both knees were cut open and new titanium alloy prosthesis were installed. I spent 4 days in the hospital at Vanderbilt and then a week in the rehab hospital. It is now 7 weeks after the procedure. I have full flexibility in both knees I continue to go to physical therapy where we are now working on strengthening all of the leg muscles. Generally I can walk around the house without a cane but I do use the cane in public. When I am sitting still or laying down there is usually little or no pain. Moving around, standing up, walking around produces varying amounts of pain but mostly tolerable. Mentally I am just exasperated with the pain and wonder when it will be gone. I had the surgery so that I could get back to living and not constantly limping about in pain. There was a further consequence in that the nerve blocks they put in so that during and for a few days after the surgery I would feel nothing in the legs but after they were removed I still had numbness on the outside of my left leg from my hip to the big toe and about a hand size patch on the outside of my right leg just below the knee. Feeling is coming back on the left leg but now it is ultra sensitive so that makes it difficult to get a good nights sleep. I am hoping that by November I will be completely healed and I can then look forward to being able to travel and walk without pain again. I have lost about 32 pounds so far and hope that I can keep losing and keep the weight off. So far I continue to lose a pound or two a week.

Here is the before x-ray of both knees:

Here are the x-rays taken immediately after surgery:























Here are pictures of the knees a few days after surgery while I was still in the hospital:





And here they are at 7-weeks post-op: