Shiny brand new knee

November 18th was the day scheduled for total knee replacement surgery for my left knee. The surgeon used a spinal block and drugs to, as he put it, "not care" about hearing the sounds of the saw and other surgical sounds. It worked. I heard the saw but it didn't bother me. I heard him hammering and that didn't bother me either. One benefit of having a spinal block is that waking up is a lot easier! No nausea either. The pain in my knee came on gradually instead of being there already when I came out of the recovery room.

I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning in the hospital. I'm not going to note here the lack of care I received in the hospital. I'm just mentioning that it was certainly substandard and bordered on dangerous and life threatening. I have had several apologies from management at the hospital and they told me they have take remedial actions. I hope so!

I have been under the care of a service that provides nursing and physical therapy services at home. They've been great and very helpful! That service terminated last week so I'll have to begin outpatient physical therapy once I find a place to go.

Now, if you are queasy, don't look at the following pictures! Here's my knee shortly after I went home from the hospital on up to a recent photo:

The last three show a little improvement, don't they?