Eleven weeks ago I had full knee replacement surgery.
This will be the last sort of update that focuses mostly on my knee. Next week are the holidays and I’ll be busy.
After that, come January, I’m going back to my occasional accountability posts, to keep track of the things that are important at the time.
My knee still hurts, and the scar is painful to the touch. This morning, there’s sleet and snow. This kind of weather continues to make my knee ache.
That being said, my knee continues to improve. A lot. I’m rarely taking even aspirin and Tylenol anymore. Partly because I’m so habituated to them they no longer do any good. But partly because while the pain is there, it’s pretty low key. I’m even wearing jeans today, which for the longest time have been too scratchy and painful to wear.
Every once in a while, I’m trying to kneel. It’s still far too painful to do for long. Eventually, I’ll get back there.
My flexibility continues to improve. I’m pretty sure that my regular bend point is now above 135 degrees. All of the yoga poses that I do show incremental improvement. I do a modified tree pose (I think that’s what it’s called) where I’m standing, rest the ankle of one leg on the knee of the standing leg, then start to bend the knee. I can now do that pose with both legs.
I didn’t do as many steps this week, only averaging 4700K per day. I had one really bad headachy day where I barely got in 2000 steps. In addition, I spent a couple of days using the pedal machine a lot more than walking around. One day in particular, when it was nasty cold and rainy, I used the pedal machine quite a lot, just for 2 minutes at a time, to get in my steps. That actually turned out to be a mistake, as my knee was quite sore that night and the next day.
On the nights when I sleep, I do continue to sleep much better than I did. My heart rate goes low and stays low, which means I’m getting good restorative sleep.
I lost weight this week, in part because of the bad headache day but also and other stuff. I’m actually below my goal weight by half a pound. (!!!) Kind of unheard of during the holiday season. I’m not worried about the next couple of weeks. Come the first of the year the accountability goal will be to stay at my goal weight. Period.
I’m still writing. Slowly building up my speed. There was at least one 1500 word day, and one 2000 word day. Otherwise, it was mostly 1000 words per day, for a total of just shy of 10K for the week.
10K per week means 40K per month, which is a slow month for where I used to be but a really great month at this point.
Need to nudge that up some to get back to 50K. But I’ll get there. Possibly not by January, but we’ll see.
My best ever year in terms of word count was 2019, where I managed about 58K per month, over 700K for the year. I’d like to get back to that, or perhaps even beat that record.
2022 isn’t the year for me to try that. There will be some construction this coming summer. No where near as much construction as there was in 2021. But enough that I’m anticipating some slowdown to the word count for three months. We’ll see.
And I guess that’s where I’m at right now. My knee is significantly better.
The big question is: was the knee surgery worth it?
Theoretically, yes. I’m much more stable on the new knee. I trust that it’s going to get better, and not just continue to decline as the unfixed knee would have.
Is it all chocolates and puppies? No. Will it get there? I believe so. I’ll continue to measure knee flexibility, possibly in the accountability posts, possibly not. We’ll see.
Do you have any big plans for the holidays? Ours are still in development, as it were. Fingers crossed that things go as currently planned, and we don’t have to make any additional drastic changes.