July, 2016

If you have decided to join me there is no doubt you are facing the same journey, or you have already traveled the path, of TKR (total knee replacement).  Either way, you are welcome.  Please feel free to leave comments, words of encouragement and of course prayers.  There is an African expression that says, "If you want to travel fast, go alone.  If you want to travel far, go with others."  Together, we can travel far.

Hard work has been a way of life for most of my 63 years.  Lifting and carrying heavy loads in the West Texas oil fields certainly placed a lot of tension on my knees, and I felt that this surely was the cause of my problems today.  My doctor assures me that my condition is more probably due to genetics than the hard work.  For many years my mother endured the pain of bad knees, but it was long before TKR was even a possibility.

For longer than I would like to admit, ibuprofen and pain were my daily companions and they have finally forced me to face the inevitable, an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon.  His diagnosis was really no surprise: degenerative joint disease (osteoarthritis) with the recommendation for TKR in both knees.  I decided to wait before I made any rash decisions.  After all, I have been suffering with this for several years, why get in a hurry now?  So, after another full year of pain and limited mobility, it is time for action.

When I decided to embark on this journey I began to research TKR, and I looked for people that had walked this path before me hoping to glean from their experiences.  A lot of information was available in fact, there was enough to throw me into information overload.  But it seems that the personal stories of others were what brought me the encouragement I needed.  For this reason, I have decided to keep a blog of my own journey through TKR.  Maybe someone will find encouragement in my story, and I will find a way to express my victories, failures, bad decisions and good ones.

Come on, let's travel!