Musings on getting a total knee replacement
W Goodwin
In the predawn hours of a Pandemic morning, my partner Jan is driving us through mostly empty streets toward the surgical wing of one of south Denver’s major hospitals. Medical magic is about to be enacted upon my 77-year-old body.
Lost inside my head, I hardly notice the dark world passing outside the car. The fact that I am not actually nervous rolls around in my mind. I think back to all the long hikes I’ve done, especially those months in the Himalaya. I imagine keeping a 7-minute-mile pace over decades of trail running. I wonder if kicking those scuba fins through thousands of dives contributed to the osteoarthritis that has devastated my knee’s articular surfaces. I mentally review the MRI images revealing the undeniable result of so many pounding miles, stressful movements and destroyed shoes, and I picture the bone-on-bone image of pain and non-functionality that has brought me to this moment.
We arrive and I am thankful to discover the usually bustling medical complex seems quiet at this early hour. Jan stops the car and hurries around to my side. Being a septuagenarian with a bone-grinding knee joint, I accept her strong assistance as I get out of the car. I hobble into the empty lobby on my secondhand OPW (Old Person’s Walker, my crude name for the support device I actually do need). I experience another flash of gratitude recalling how Jan anticipated this and bought the walker for me at a…
