Running with the gazelles

At my invitation, several readers were kind enough to write and share their thoughts about surgery, pain and healing.

One letter was from a real estate agent my age (70), who knows she needs the same surgery I had in July. “Even though I haven’t injured my knees, they are wearing out faster than my need for them,” she said.

Although she’s worried about having to give up work, she has kept her sense of humor. She said she’d be embarrassed if her knees gave out and dropped her down a flight of stairs as she shows a house.

In response to my fussing about surgery not being a piece of cake, she remarked that everyone recovers from major surgery (which joint replacement is) differently. Her 72-year-old husband spent most of his first day home from quadruple cardiac by-pass surgery walking around the house. He built a sundeck during his rehabilitation.

Another reader said her very active 83-year-old father-in-law anticipated a relatively quick and easy hospitalization and recovery because he too had been assured by so many well-meaning friends who knew someone who been through joint replacement, and it was “a breeze.”

“The reality of his experience was very much as you described,” she said.

A nurse friend helped me get it into perspective. “The kind of insult to the body like that of major surgery and deep anesthesia needs six months or more to heal,” she said. And everyone processes it differently.

Words like “miracle” can be off-putting, so I don’t use them often. In fact, I’m not sure I believe in miracles in the usual sense. I think what we call miracles often – in fact, usually – have a natural explanation. Qualifying for miracle status is often a matter of timing.

I read most of the reams of paper thrust into my dubious hand as I was prepped and prepped and prepped for surgery. (In today’s education-based litigious culture, prepping is more a matter of collecting signatures than swabbing with betadine, as I recall it.) Anyhow, somewhere in those pages post-op pain was mentioned in association with a time period of six weeks following surgery. Either I didn’t read it carefully or I dismissed it as not applying to me. I find denial works pretty well in most cases.

At any rate, depending on how recently I had taken a pain pill, I recall that first six sleep-deprived weeks after they installed my new knee as a period of constant pain, ranging from a dull ache to the misery of a “Charlie horse” in the calf at least nightly. I could never get comfortable in bed at night, and spent my daytime hours flexing and stretching in more and more forced rehabilitative exercises.

Everyone involved in this process was firm but sympathetic, as though they knew something I did not, the fact that I would get better, I suppose.

There was Dr. Michael’s long-suffering staff members who unfailingly returned phone calls;

David French, a nice physical therapist who came to the house three mornings a week to get me started;

Dr. Gail Hale, P.T., a firm but knowledgeable “physical terrorist” (her term) who guided me through more challenging maneuvers;

The Kroger pharmacists who cautioned me about too much pain med (vs. the surgeon’s medical staff who urged me not to let pain get ahead of the pain med);

Friends and church members whose cards, calls and good wishes really mattered.

It takes a village indeed.

So, we mentioned miracles. In about the sixth week, it occurred to me that if I was sick of the sound of my whiney voice, pity everyone around me, and I prayed, “Lord, if I shut up about this, would you take the pain away?”

Call it a miracle, call it an alignment of the planets, I don’t care. These things happened in order: I was able to stop taking blood-thinners to prevent clots, and that allowed me to take an anti-inflammatory that works very well for me.

On a Friday, six weeks and two days post-op, Dr. Gail finished our session with the incredible massage she does in which her strong thumbs and fingers work out the fluid that builds up in passages around the joint. I went home, as usual, took the pill, put ice on the knee and lay down in bed. It was 12:30 p.m. I woke up four hours later.

I couldn’t feel my knee. I stirred a little and sat up. No pain. I got out of bed, gingerly as usual, easing my weight down on it. I walked from bedroom to kitchen and back. No pain.

It was over.

Truth to tell, especially if I overdo, it will ache a little, like a reminder, but after weeks of answering Dr. Gail’s daily request for a pain level based on a 1 to 10 scale – 8, 6, 7, 4 – I could now say “zero.”

I need to work on strength, obviously. I’m asking this new knee to do things like climbing and descending steps unsupported – exploits the old knee had not done in five or six years.

The reader who also faces surgery wished me well and offered hope that I may soon “run with the gazelles.” I am not yet ready to run with gazelles, and I tire easily, but right now I can almost do the bunny hop.

“Pain is a life-altering experience,” my nurse-friend said. At the time, I thought it was going to be permanent condition for me.

Now that it’s gone, I see that it has taught me something about compassion.

And patience.