Six Months after Surgery

I have had my first real awareness that my new knee is not a replacement for the knee I was born with. Over the past few weeks, I have seriously taxed my knee by doing painting and maintenance on my house. With summer weather upon us, I worked the entire Memorial Day weekend from sun-up to sun-down painting, standing for extended periods of time on a 32 foot ladder, moving the ladder, bending and walking about working. At one point while moving the heavy ladder, I felt a strained sensation in my knee and observed a tiny bit of swelling on the outer knee area. The knee also had a slight stiffness feeling to it. Fortunately, there was no pain.

I am assuming that I strained the knee area from all the work, but will watch carefully over the next several days/weeks to be sure that nothing more serious is going on. Of course, several depressing thoughts crossed my mind such as a loosening of the knee prosthesis where it was cemented into my knee or even a possible infection since I had cut my finger a time or two from working on the house.

A few weeks back, I did go to the Dentist for the first time since the knee replacement. I  took 4 capsules of 500MG amoxocillin (antibotic) as a precautionary measure one hour before the dental cleaning. All this went without incident.

I am next scheduled to see my doctor for a follow-up evaluation on the knee replacement in December. December will be the one year mark since the surgery. At the one year follow-up visit, the doctor will take another x-ray to review status and progress of the knee prosthesis.

And as a final entry to the 6 month update, here is a short video with me playing golf with my new knee and my three sons on Father's Day.