On Thursday I had my left knee operated on. This is the second operation on that leg. In November 2012 I had a partial put in the left knee. It was good for about the first eight years, but after that the left knee slowly grew painful, until January of this year when I tried to drive my wife to see a specialist down in Ft. Lauderdale. The pain in my left knee grew so intense while I drove that she had to take over. That’s when I realized I needed to replace the partial with a complete replacement. And so the search began for someone to perform that procedure.

I would have gone back to the original surgeon from 2012, but the group he’d been a part of had changed hospitals, and he’d moved out of the area. That’s when I decided to use the same surgeon who’d replaced my right knee with a full replacement. So yesterday I went into a same day surgery center and had the procedure done. They spent 45 minutes working on my knee and I spent about two hours in post-op recovery before I went home.

I had to wait for a while in the waiting room, as I was the last procedure of the day. By the time I finally went back and was prepped for surgery it was 1 pm in the afternoon.

Here’s the surgical team right before the important work was to start. The surgeon is the second from the left, looking straight into the camera.

I’ve now been home for a while, taking my medications and doing my basic exercises. I’ve had a physical therapy nurse come by and work with me, and to get me going. I’m required to get up and walk every hour, and to exercise three times per day. All in the comfort of my home. When the nurse came by to change my dressing today there were four little tiny spots of blood. No discoloration, no indication of infection. The incision had been glued back, and the surface of my knee was very smooth. It’s swollen because of the procedure, but that will go down over the next days and weeks.

I’m motivated to get through this and to come out of the end of this in better shape than when I went into it. This left knee has kept me from doing what I need to do, and I needed to get it fixed now while I still have reasonable physical health.

These photos are the matching set to go with the photos they took for me back in February 2016. And I used the same camera, a Sony NEX-5N with a Sigma 2.8/19mm EX DN prime. An old camera still going strong.

In exactly one week I’m having knee surgery on my left knee, in which the partial replacement I received back in 2012 will be replaced with a full replacement. This makes the second knee replacement with this surgeon; he performed a full replacement on my right back in 2016, and it’s been fine ever since. The right knee was an out patient procedure, where I went in early morning and was back home by mid-afternoon. My wife drove me home. After a period of recuperation and physical therapy I’ve been fine ever since. Not so much the left knee.

In any event the left partial will get replaced and I’ll find out if the left will go as well as the right.

If you ask me what my attitude is right now, I’d say a combination of apprehension and fatalism. I’ve had more examinations and pictures made in the past four weeks than I’ve had in as many years, so that everyone concerned has all necessary and up-to-date medical information about me. That’s a good thing.

And I’ll be going back to the same surgery center I was in back in 2016. That, too, is a very good thing. If either the doctor or the center weren’t up to scratch then they wouldn’t be around.

The length of time between procedures is also comforting if for no other reason that major advancements in joint replacement have been ongoing. Unless something unknown should occur, I expect this left replacement to be my final replacement.

But I’m still nervous.