Learning to Walk Again



At the beginning of July I had a bilateral knee replacement. It wasn't my idea of fun, but I'd reached the point when it was either replacement or a wheel chair. I could ride for over 6 hours but could only walk about half an hour. Doing both knees might seem a bit drastic, but I had to deal with my slow season over the summer and hopefully I'd be in shape for the winter season. Besides, why go through pain twice when you can just do it once? I mean how bad could it be?



In a word: bad. The five days in the hospital were only tolerable due to the kindness of the morphine they were giving me post operative. The surgery itself wasn't all that painful, but my muscles had to learn new ways of moving after 60 years of the wrong way. The muscles hurt a lot. But once I went home, the only painkillers needed were some relatively mild anti-inflammatories. But the true help came from a neighbour who is a massage therapist who helped to convince my muscles that they really liked their new places.



I had another two weeks confined to the house until the staples came out and then I was able to start moving around my farm. The most important thing for me to do was to learn to walk properly...not the way I'd been doing it for about ten years. So I had to unlearn the incorrect walk and learn the correct. It takes forever and I had to walk so slowly to make sure that made each step correctly. It was an exercise in patience, almost as welcome as ab work.



It's now almost two months since the surgery. Today I went horseback riding (just walking on one of my most reliable horses), drove into Maadi, walked up and down a couple flights of stairs, went for coffee, drove home to the farm and wandered around there...all without my crutches. It feels great.

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