Well, I’m supposed to have one anyway. By the time you read this I should be out of the hospital complete with a nifty new cyborg knee that will help me run faster and jump higher, or at least stroll around the arboretum in town without being in constant pain.
I have osteoarthritis – basically, I have no cartilage in my right knee. I certainly earned it, having played baseball and tennis all my teens and twenties, and basketball, and those years of racquetball, and then softball until I was in my late fifties. It feels like my body just finally said, “Dude, enough of this, I’m worn out.”
When I was still playing softball I sometimes complained about my sore knees in a “Gosh I guess I’m getting older” sort of way, but by 2016 the pain was noticeable in normal movement and my orthopedist told me what was wrong. It was just discomfort in the beginning – I walked all over Copenhagen and half of Denmark in late 2019 and could manage it just fine. Two years later, however, my condition has degenerated so badly it becomes obvious that surgery is the only option.
I know scads of people who have had this operation done and everyone was fine, but that doesn’t mean I’m not scared to death because it is a major assault on my body and I’ve developed this fear that I won’t wake up from the anesthesia. Any new anxiety I can add to my life is a plus, right?
Some fun facts about this operation:
- More than 600,000 Americans get new knees every year.
- Most people who get a new knee are between the ages of 50 and 80, with the average age slowly creeping downward. In 2000 the average age was 68.9, in 2010 it was 66.2.
- Approximately 90% of knee replacements will last from 15 years to considerably longer. If I take care of the knee it should serve me through the rest of my life.