TKR: The Sort of Brief Backstory leading up to my TKR.
In my 20's (long time ago), I was fairly active with Sports, hiking, swimming, oh, and on Active Duty in the US Navy. Being physically active (and being somewhat accident prone) also means having sprained ankles, falls on knees, other typical sports related injuries, oh and the military takes its toll also. I initially hurt my right knee while on active duty, but that's another story.
In my 30's, I started having a few issues with my right knee, it would like to lock up or go out on me during hikes, camping, or any other activity that required strain on my knee. Playing sports was drastically reduced. Then my 40's, while working on my Geology degree ( paleontology), more knee issues occurred. Slipping down slopes or losing my footing on roadcuts (fossil hunting and my thesis area), twisting the knee (not a good thing) to the point that I had to slow down even more. It was during this time that I got my first knee brace, it helped, along with my first series of shots in the knee. I was told at the time that the shots would give me relief for anywhere from 6 months to a year or two. I was one of the lucky ones, it lasted almost 9 years.
However, because I was favoring my right knee, guess what!? Yeah, the left knee started to have issues also. I was told at the time that the cartilage in both my knees were in pretty bad shape, but hey, that was kind of expected. What wasn't expected was that I was told that I was still too young to have my knees replaced at that time. So, I had a second series of shots in both my knees when in my early 50's. Worked great, but only for about 3 years. I was wearing braces on both knees at this point, hiking hurt like h***, walking was getting more difficult, and I was grinding bone on bone. How do I know? 1) It hurt, 2) you could hear my bones grinding from 6 feet away. and 3) X-rays and MRI's confirmed it. But guess what! Still too young to have TKR's done. Exercising was getting all but impossible to do. Burpees, Mountain Climber's? Yeah, those don't do well with bad knees. As my ability to walk degraded, so did my activity, and unfortunately, the weight went up. (This is not good for knees).
At the end of 2019, I could hardly walk, I was 60 (the magic age for TKR) and had a 3rd set of shots, which did nothing, except annoy my insurance company (we ended up paying for the shots). My husband said it was painful to watch me walking. And it was.
So the final step and the first step, I made an appointment with an Orthopedic Specialist, to see what could be done. The specialist I saw didn't do surgeries anymore and was only working as a consultant at the time. He looked at the X-rays, MRI's and shot history and said, "Congratulations, your knees are bad enough, and you are old enough to get TKR's. He suggested one of the Doctors on his team, and gave me his number.
That's the backstory, I hope I didn't bore too much. Next post, the first step: finding a doctor.
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