Posted by:
catnip
(
)
Date: October 23, 2016 01:03AM
From early childhood on, my kneecaps kept dislocating, with virtually any activity (a major nuisance that required having the doctor go in with a horse-sized needle, to draw out the fluid that made the knee swell to the size of a soccer ball) and then several weeks in a cast.
I had surgery on both of them in my teen years, which nailed the kneecaps down and kept them from dislocating, which was an improvement.
However, in later adult life, I developed such severe arthritis in both knees that just walking was very painful. When my doctor got the x-rays and snapped them up into those little back-lit screens, he exclaimed, "Good Lord, catnip! How have you managed to keep walking all these years??"
He referred me to an orthopedic surgeon, who told me that I was really too young (only in my 50s) for a knee replacement, but agreed that living with them in that condition was out of the question.
He suggested getting them replaced at the same time. He told me that I would curse his name, several times a day, for the first 10 to 14 days, but after that, as I recovered, I would be so glad to have it over and done with. He was right on both counts.
The kids were still at home at that time, and they were a huge help. Full healing took a while, but those knees have not given me any problems. They hiked all over Europe 10 years ago, and have kept going.
These days, arthritis in my low back is causing limited mobility, but those knees are still holding up just fine. I just have to remember to tell people that I have them before going through a metal sensor, because they WILL set it off. I learned how to say "artificial" in several languages while traveling in Europe, while pointing to my knees. They used the little hand-carried "wands" to make sure that the metal was just in my knees, but this never caused any problems.
Since healing fully, they have never caused any problem at all.