As y’all may or may not recall, I had a full knee replacement done three years ago. I figured I’d report in about where I’m at with it.

What I want to emphasize is that while the knee replacement isn’t all kittens and rainbows, it needed to be done. I was bad and my knee was never, ever going to recover without it. I could no longer walk 10K steps a day—7K was my max and that number would have gone down. My knee was swollen and hurt. A lot.

If I could go back in time, I would stop myself from doing the things that hurt my knee so I didn’t need a knee replacement. I’d still get the knee replacement though, because I had to.

To continue to focus on the good things with the new knee: I can walk. I can do 10K a day easy. I’ve done upwards of 20K on occasion with no issues.

I can squat all the way down, with my heels flat on the floor and have my butt on my calves. (I know, some people can’t do that even without a knee replacement. But I’ve always been flexible.) This is one of my favorite stretches, BTW, as from this position I lean forward a bit and get a really nice stretch through the back of my heels and calves.

Some of the issues that I’m still dealing with include the fact that my knee clicks. A lot—three clicks per step. I can make it click loud enough that my husband can hear it. My surgeon assured me that the clicking isn’t because I overstretched the knee. It’s just something that happens. Three years in, I can ignore it most of the time, but when I pay attention to it, I still hear it.

The muscles around my knee continue to be stiff and sore, and tighten weirdly sometimes. I see a masseuse once a week and she always works on my knee. I don’t know where the true cause of my muscles issues are. Is my gait wrong? My hips? I stretch (a lot) but it doesn’t seem to ever help. (And looking it up I just learned that this happens to many of the knee replacement patients—that the problems they were having weren’t necessarily all relieved by the knee replacement.)

I also still have pain along the incision site. The nerves that were cut there have yet to heal completely. The good news is that the pain continues to diminish. It started off as three-inch nails being driven into my skin, then it was long needles, now it’s tiny pins. The amount of the scar that hurts has also decreased, so it’s just along the top and bottom of the scar.

However, this makes it very difficult to kneel. It’s physically painful to do so. I keep doing it, I want to get back to being able to do that. I’m just not there yet. It also really feels weird, but that’s something I can get used to. The pain? Not so much.

My hope is that after five years that pain will be gone. I do practice kneeling on my bed every day, as kneeling on a soft surface isn’t as painful anymore.

So again, while I’m not happy that I had to get a knee replacement, I’m still glad that I did it, as I’m better now than I would have been if I hadn’t done it.

Feel free to ask me any questions about it.