I had full knee replacement surgery done seven weeks ago.

I am much, much better than I was. I’m having times that are pretty much pain free. I’m slowly regaining my flexibility.

What I’m really looking forward to are good weeks. I’m still merely having good days sprinkled here and there. The good days are REALLY good at this point, but I’d like for there to be more of them.

Last week, I had 3.5 good days. Last week was a little unusual in some ways, though.

Monday I was recovering from Orycon, so I wasn’t expecting it to be a good day.

Tuesday turned out to be a really good day. Very little pain. I wrote 2100 words of fiction. 1400 in the first hour, then I took a break, walked my 250 steps, and then wrote another 700 words in the next 30 minutes. I could feel my brain starting to leak out of my skull by the end of it, and was completely wiped out by the time I finished. Writing is a muscle, and mine has atrophied.

I couldn’t sleep for various reasons Tuesday night, so Wednesday was yet another bad day. Having a massage/PT at 9 AM didn’t help, so I was pretty much in pain and wasted for the entire day.

Thursday was another really good day, wrote and did lots of things. My pain level was so low that I took some OTC meds at 2 PM, then forgot to take any for the rest of the day.

Woke up Friday with a small level of pain. Maybe a 3 on a scale of 1-10. It wasn’t that it was a lot of pain, it was just so constant that I couldn’t ignore it. OTC meds took care of it though, sending the pain right back down to a 0-1.

Mid-afternoon, I was sanding three shelves for TH2 when I got hit with this wave of exhaustion. It was weird. Figured out shortly afterward that my period had just started.

WTF body? Seriously?

Things went downhill from there. Pain rose rapidly to between a 5-6. This happened the last time I had my period, which occurred four weeks ago. Pain went right up over the top then as well.

Saturday I did some things, but it wasn’t a great day. Pain was less than on Friday, but still pretty high.

Sunday was a good day. Pain had diminished significantly. I didn’t take any OTC meds until 11 AM. Then took some just before bed, just in case.

This morning so far has been a good morning. Very little pain. It seems to only hurt n when I touch the area, so very localized.

I will be doing more writing today. Last week, I averaged 1000 words per day, which is the most I’ve managed for quite some time. After today, I will have written more this month than I did last month, so my word count continues to rise. Not back to pre-surgery levels, but it’ll get there.

Last week I also had an “ah ha!” moment with my knee. I tried one of my old yoga moves, Warrior II. (Front knee bent, back leg straight, arms spread, looking out over front arm.) I haven’t been able to do Warrior II or that sequence of poses for quite some time. Even when my knee could bend enough, I couldn’t do the pose because my knee felt wobbly.

I tried the pose last week. I can’t bend my knee as much as I used to but that will come. However, I felt completely comfortable doing the pose. My knee was no longer wobbly. It felt stable.

I don’t think I’d remembered until just then how unstable my knee had felt when I’d tried doing things. I’d stopped a lot of activities not because I couldn’t do them, but because I didn’t think my knee would hold, and I didn’t want to fall and really hurt myself.

I know that most people are so happy with their knee replacement, that they wish they’d done it sooner. I’m not there yet on the one hand. On the other, as the pain continues to decrease and my abilities to do things increases, I can see getting there eventually.

So what are you looking forward to? What small gains are you making on a larger goal?