I'm healing. And healing is painful. It seems that with my new and balanced knees comes a lot of adjustment for the rest of my body. May back aches, my thighs hurt, my shoulders and neck hurt. Physio is going well, difficult, and so I'm glad it is in a group format. We do circuit training with 1 physiotherapist, 1 physiotherapist-assistant, and 1 student guiding as along. As a group we all help each other with answers to questions like "did you feel numb here", "for how long", "why does my whole body hurt", "bend your knees", "wow good work" etc. etc.

The weather has been horrible and very discouraging for mental healing. The clocks changed a while ago and it seems very strange to have the light late into the evening when the ground is STILL covered in snow. The Farmer's Almanac, I've heard, calls for a colder than usual April. Just great! Not!!!

Post-op I've noticed I have difficulty with concentration. This is normal, I'm told. I went into the hospsital with 2 books, knitting and 2 magazines. I read nothing, I knit nothing. Since home I have finished "The Friday Night Knitting Club" and started another light read, a gift from my pal, "The Friends We Keep" and it is just the perfect speed for my brain.

I bet my snow drops have already flowered, come and gone under the roof of snow over their heads. That has happened before. Here is a positive picture....from last April.

Now it is time to move around or I will seize up. My day consists of getting up and "ready for the day", exercises at home, walk around, sit down, walk around, lay down, physio at the hospital or more exercises at home...rinse and repeat.

Complete and total healing, the surgeon says, takes one year but the majority of healing will be done by 6 months....TIFF-time yayayayayaya. I'll race you to the subway Leslie! :>).

Day by day I feel an improvement...in my strength and flexibility...very tiny improvements...mixed in with sharp stabbing pains...achy knees and sore skin. That's a strange feeling; that of sore skin. The flesh around the incision is numb. My new friends at physio say that is normal. Still lots of swelling to reduce yet. And I still bruise easily and with 1 1/2 more weeks of Heprin shots to go that will continue.

Physio has started in full swing, 1 hour 3 x week for approximately 4 weeks. I am thankful to be Canadian and received this surgery, hospital care and physiotherapy for nothing. Ok, I did have to wait a year to see the best surgeon and then 13 months for the surgery; but it was worth it.

Nasty looking left leg..right didn't look much better
Some beautiful flowers I received

Check out the crutch setting...5'1"..I am sure I was only 5'0"...yay!!

Oh boy, the new knees are in, they are 10 days old and settling in to their new home. Sometimes that is a painful process but I can tell already that there is such an improvement. The pain I experience now is different; it's all pulled-muscles and ligaments and stretching post-operative skin and staples waiting to come out and swelling to reduce and bruises to disappear kind of pain....this is healing pain. Each day I can feel the difference, strength returning, flexibility improving and pain lessening.

Two diagrams of the new knees I'm getting. "Arthritis-be-gone"

Tomorrow 8:00 a.m., surgery day, I have been waiting 13 months for the surgery. But really, I gave up walking for fitness in the fall of 2003 due to pain, then my knee actually "died" April 2004. It didn't take long for my right knee to give way under the strain of the left knee. I've waited and now my turn has come to get some (hopefully) relief. I'm a little scared...mainly scared of the unknown pain which is funny considering I've been in constant pain of varying degrees for 4 1/2 years. But I'm set to go now.

Snow day....Sab playing in the snow
Bryan after shovelling the driveway