December 14, 2024

Last Tuesday, I had my full knee replacement surgery. Those of you who are regular readers knew this was coming. I tried to share the information without being obnoxious about it. Pushing the limits of that not being obnoxious goal, I thought I would share a few thoughts about the surgery and the first two weeks of my 4-to-6-month recovery process, mixed in with a few of the themes I have hit in previous blog posts.

• I’ve never been cleaner than when I went into surgery. They make you shower with a special heavy duty anti-bacterial soap three times before you make you way to the hospital to check in. OK. Maybe I was cleaner one other time. I was midway through a five-week bike ride across Europe in 1982, and we stopped at Baden-Baden in (then) West Germany. We paid a few marks and got to experience their famous and ancient baths. But before I was allowed to enter, I had to spend 10 minutes being soaped up and scoured by a person I named Bernhard Bristlebrush, a large German man who enjoyed the task way more than he should have. But man, I was clean.

• My knee was replaced by Dr. Erik Zeegen and his team at UCLA Santa Monica. Every interaction was professional, kind, clear, and even enjoyable. And so far, the follow up has been caring and responsive. Jill and I are beyond impressed. In every interaction, I felt like the UCLA employees were proud of being on the UCLA team. They lived up to the UCLA Vision:  Our Vision is to heal humankind, one patient at a time, by improving health, alleviating suffering, and delivering acts of kindness. I’ve written about kindness and the power and beauty of working on a unified team. My gratitude for each team member in helping me through this is overflowing.

• In most cases these days, a full knee replacement is outpatient surgery. I checked in at 6:15 AM, had the surgery at 8:30, received training on walking (using a walker) and getting in and out of a car, and I was out there by 3:30 PM. Wow.

• The team said the surgery went well. I received my X-rays the next day. Pretty good improvement, right? I think my old knee (above left) looks like an angry Harry Potter Sorting Hat.

• The ice machine is my friend. I am probably icing for half of my waking hours.

• I shouldn’t write this, but my previous experience with Oxycodone was fantastic. I had broken a finger in multiple places, and the doctors were trying to set it. It was terribly painful, and all of the sudden, it wasn’t. Nothing mattered. That’s when I learned that opioids, unlike anything else I’ve ever taken, are so good that they are dangerously addictive. In an odd way, I was looking forward to briefly returning to that no pain and nothing matters state. Alas, it was not the same. It just made me tired.  Extremely disappointing, and probably for the best.

• The best anti-pain treatment I had this time was called a nerve block. They insert a needle into my thigh above my knee before the surgery, and they attached a device that pumped anti-pain juice into my leg every two hours, effectively keeping my brain from realizing my knee was in pain. Wow. That thing worked. Unfortunately, long term use can cause problems, so it came out three days after the surgery. I miss it.

• Jill has been a rock star, and our marriage is still intact. I hope that both of those things continue. Our shared household duties ratio has slightly altered from 49 (me)/51 (Jill) to about 0 (me)/100 (Jill). I’m occasionally cranky, and, on top of doing everything, she has the unenviable added task of making sure I’m not doing things I should not be doing. My brother Bill told me that three or four days after his knee replacement surgery, the drugs were making him feel just fine, so he decided he should go out and pressure wash the driveway. Nothing bad happened, but his lovely wife was not happy with him at all.  Thanks, Jilly for keeping me in line and for all of the help! We usually don’t exchange gifts during the holidays, but I think I owe her something big.

• I don’t hate my physical therapist . . . yet. Right now, I have a 45-minute routine that I try to do five times a day to help my leg straighten out and bend like it used to. I start with a 20-minute walk, then do 10 minutes of stretches, then I get on a special machine that I am renting for 8 weeks, which uses a cycling motion to help my ligaments and muscles adapt to the new knee and to regain flexibility. It’s doable, and I don’t hate it yet. It’s my newest and most important routine, and I plan to prioritize it every day.

• One of UCLA’s mottos for orthopedics is, “Movement is Medicine.” I like it. I feel best when I am walking the 30 steps through our living room and down our hallway, turning around and doing it again, and again, and again. Right now, each walk is about 0.33 miles on the world’s shortest track. So if I’m doing that five times a day, I’m at 1.5 miles a day or so. Excellent!

• And if movement is indeed medicine, then stillness, at least long stretches of it, is the opposite. Getting up, shifting positions, and moving makes me feel less stiff. This surgery is solely intended to give me the opportunity to be fully active for the next 20 years, and I know it will take getting out of my chair and being active, suffering now so I won’t suffer later, to make the most of it.

• Sleeping is a challenge. It’s always a challenge for me, and being a pain wimp makes it even more of one. Luckily, everyone knows that getting quality sleep doesn’t matter at all for recovering from injuries.

• I wrote a blog post a while back called “Do Something Every Day that Sucks.” If that’s my mantra for success, then all I have to do is my daily rehab activities. Winning!

• I am not alone. They do about one million knee replacements a year now in the US. I am on the younger side for having it. My friend Rhonda had her surgery a week after mine. She has already told me that she’s going to win our recovery contest. I didn’t even know it was a competition! And how do you win? I’ll do my best, but I’ve already accepted that she will stop at nothing to leave me in her dust.

I promise I won’t be writing about this in each of the next 18 blog posts, but it’s kind of a big deal in my life right now, so I thought I would share this time. I considered sharing a journal where I describe the recovery process each day, but after doing it for a few days, I was boring myself. Suffice it to say, so far so good, I feel very cared for by my medical team, my family, and my friends, I’m trying to be a more patient patient at home, and to remember that slow and steady wins the race.

Have a good day, y’all, and your comments are always appreciated.

— Mike

Post #123 on www.drmdmatthews.com

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NOTES

As I send this, firefighters, both professional and volunteer, are wrapping up their efforts on the Franklin Fire, the latest fire to hit Malibu. I know people whose homes were damaged, and I know far more whose homes were saved. Unlike the Woolsey FIre in 2018, when there were so many fires in southern California that firefighters could not fully attack on all fronts, the response to the Franklin Fire was overwhelming. As I drove down the highway yesterday, there were still hundreds of fire trucks and repair vehicles, base camps for firefighters, and so much more. My heart goes out to those whose lives have been uprooted, and my gratitude is full for the professionals and volunteers who made a difference.

This fire never got closer than 6 or 7 miles from our home. We did lose our electricity for two days, but we have a generator that can keep the bare necessities going. We are far more used to that than I would like to be. Thanks to so many of you who reached out to check on us. We were lucky this time.

As I wrote this post, the fact that I have health insurance that will cover most of these costs is not lost on me. Health insurance is on every front page these days, and it is extremely troubling. The US leads the world in health care innovation and research, but our costs and our insurance issues are problems. The Affordable Care Act has helped millions to gain insurance, but I only see that weakening in the next few years. My wife and I are both long time public school employees, and we know how fortunate we have been to have health insurance over all of those years. I know this: we can be better as a nation when it comes to health insurance.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. One of the many purposes of these blog posts is to motivate myself. By sharing the things I know I should be doing (see list below for starters), I have one more reason to actually do them. I fall short every day. And I get back on the horse. I began the year talking about John Wooden’s Make Each Day a Masterpiece. I have made serious efforts to do that on many days, and on many days it got away from me. And even on my best days, I doubt you would see my effort hanging in the Getty Museum. That being said, I want to lead my best life and be the best that I can be, and I’m hoping for a good day today.

Some of my blog posts that I referenced above:

• Gratitude
• Routines
• Kindness
• Do Something Every Day that Sucks
• Don’t Let the Old Man In
• Teams