The Night Before

My knee replacement surgery is tomorrow. I have to be at the hospital at 5:30 AM, which will be difficult enough in itself!

On Friday I decided to give my knee one last fling, so that I have a clear memory of how much I was limited by the arthritis. I did 15 minutes on the elliptical machine at the gym, and then later in the afternoon I hit a bucket of balls at the driving range. Well, I made it about 2/3 of the way through the bucket when I started to feel a twinge in my knee, so I gave the rest to the guy next to me and headed home.

For the past decade or so, I’ve dealt with my knee, as well as my other painful joints, by taking Aleve (naproxen sodium). If I knew I would be doing something active, I would take it ahead of time prophylactically, and always took it afterwards. This would keep the inflammation to a minimum. However, when you are having surgery, they make you stop taking all drugs a week ahead of time, as they can increase your chances of blood clots during surgery. So after my exertion during the day, my knee was throbbing pretty badly at night. The pain continued through the weekend, and it’s still present as I’m typing this. Obviously I had relied on Aleve to mitigate the pain in my knee so much that I had forgotten just how bad it could be.

I probably won’t be able to add to this blog for a few days, but I’ll try to remember as much of the experience as I can so I can write about it later.