Knee replacement
 

I destroyed my knee in my 20s in a mountain biking crash. By my late thirties the knee was riddled with arthritis and needed to be replaced. I wouldn’t do it because of my age and my refusal to change my active lifestyle. I just put up with the pain and relied on meloxicam to handle the rest. Well I can’t take it anymore and at 51 I scheduled my replacement yesterday. I guess the point of my post is to seek advice from any members here who’ve been down this road. I love to golf, hike, fish, and most importantly ride motorcycles. Are these hobbies gonna suck now? I’m so used to dealing with constant pain that maybe I’ll enjoy these things more once I’m recovered.

Not at all. I haven't had a knee done, but a total shoulder replacement. I was in PT with plenty of knee people. Those that I know you wouldn't guess unless they tell you. Nothing but good outcome.

Some caution: infection and loss of the knee is possible in 5% so be very careful with cuts, etc. Some cases are unavoidable due to the surgery itself being flawed, so get the best surgeon AND OR that you can. Settle for nothing less than the guy that does pro athletes.

And PT is a beotch. Do it and do it thoroughly and well. For every painful day of PT you will enjoy hundreds of great days with a new knee.

My MIL has had both done, couple years apart due to covid. The first was a standard off the shelf knee device. She Was down for many weeks, PT, etc but was a difficult recovery. Recently she had the other done with the Conformis knee system. I ***** you not, she was up and walking the day after and her total recovery was like 2 weeks. Never had any pain either. Not many doctors do conformis so you have to find one who does it. It’s also custom to you, requires 3D scanning etc. highly suggest you look into it.

I have 8 bolts in my knee from a mountain bike crash. PT is a *****. The only time I took pain med, was to go to PT so they could torture me some more.
My ortho surgeon- who does the magic basketball team and a few others- expected me to walk with a cane the rest of my life. 16yrs later it has been great. I can cycle, climb, hike. Lost 5-10% strength- but no cane, no limp, no nothing. It is starting to ache so a knee replacement is in my cards in the next 5 yrs or so.
Go to PT. Do all the exercises. Do more of them.
Knees tend to have good outcomes.
good luck
gary

No knee replacement for me, just a hip. I put off the surgery until I could not take it anymore, and I never used anything but over the counter pain meds.

On the 14th of August it will have been 11 years, and they only time I even think about it is as I step out of the shower, and I see the large scar on my hip area. Pretty much the dumbest decision I ever made in my left was to delay the surgery. I should had had it done years earlier. Every single step was painful before. Now I am fixed.

A friend of mine in his late 50's had a knee replacement last year . He did the recommended PT and when he was home would go up and down the stairs for an additional workout . He now golfs 3 times a week and has no limitations . He was in severe pain before the surgery . As long as your doctor isn't a Mengele you will be fine . Good luck

Knee replacement
 

This is what I want to hear. I golf twice a week now and suffer the rest of the week. I plan on doing the necessary work.

OEM human parts wear out.

Go aftermarket replacements!

And you get cool titanium parts! So when the extraterrestrials come to Earth and capture you, they will know you are part of an advanced civilization, and not just food. That might be bad if they are harvesting titanium however. It is not something to worry about much! ;)

One of our Porsche customers was an orthopedist, invented a hip replacement and wrote a book about it. I saw the book in his trunk one time and asked him about it. He told me the royalties from the book paid for his new 911TT. Ca-Ching. Hope your knee-job works out well.

My wife had Knee and Hip replaced last year. 64 years old. She mountain bikes and road cycles with me. Recently did a 30 mile ride with me. She no longer has to deal with pain.

I hit a concrete wall 25 years ago in a moto incident and ripped my knee apart. Ortho guy was a friend and did a good job. used cadaver tissue to build bridges for ligaments to grow back. Had me running a 7 minute mile shortly after surgery.. have ridden lots of enduro stuff and Mountain biked for years since but arthritis sets in both knees now if I dont exercise regularly. May opt for replacement in the future but for now cycling keeps the arthritis under control

I’m thinking I’ll need an e-mountain bike once this is done. I think my days of 30 mile trail rides are behind me. Hope I’m wrong.

I’m 71 and had my knee replaced 9 months ago. I finally have arrived at the point where I don’t think about my knee. It was consuming me at all waking hours. I really did not know what to expect. The stiffness was the worst. The emphasis is on getting your leg to bed to 120-140 degrees and they tell you you have 15-16 weeks to get there or you might need a revision. My swelling prevented me from getting there in that time frame. But, I’m getting more and more flexibility as the time passes. It takes at least a year before you start to feel normal again. So.. I still have three more months to go. Oh… no more pain and that’s the most important thing.

that was a road ride. i still do 30 mile trail rides but she is only good for about 10 ofjf road

Wife had hers done Tuesday morning.

I went thru 5-10 per week for 5 years working as an aide in the PT department of a local acute care hospital.

The differences that 30+ years makes is amazing....

I'm so lucky with no problems with joints. However, I have several friends who have had dual knee and hip replacements. They'e all had really positive things to say about it.

I have had both done by 2 really good ortho guys in the same practice. I had "poster boy for arthritis" knees, and had them done 2 years apart. Now about 5 years ago, it changed my life and gave me back full mobility, meaning no handicap. My only caution to anyone contemplating this is to do the rehab as a willing and enthusiastic participant! Do the ice for the first week or so to keep the swelling down. They gave me an ice water pump contraption with a sleeve for the knee to circulate ice water around the knee. My wife kept the ice chamber full of ice so it was always ice cold. The doc told me that swelling is not a good thing and to be avoided, therefore use the ice and elevation of the knee. Use the walker, you don't want to crash on the way to the bathroom (I did, fainted taking out a towel rack and banging my head, knee ok, got dehydrated) First knee about 8 weeks of recuperation, second about 6 weeks. I was 70 at the time.
The docs cautioned against doing very strenuous activities, like snow skiing, mountain biking, tennis, MMA fighting or anything that can stress and damage the new knee.
They said the repair for a fracture of the implant or a separation of the implant from the femur or tibia (cement holding it place) was "positively medieval", meaning cutting off the new knee and starting over. My understanding is the bone eventually makes the implant part of the native structure (any Doc's please correct me if wrong on this).
Interesting point: in the first operation they used staples to close the incision, in the second they used some sort of surgical glue to close the incision, with a smaller scar.
Good luck!

This is the key right here. Well, that and having some muscle tone in both legs and arms (for using walker) BEFORE your surgery.

From the hundreds that I worked with in the early 90s, every basket case was either a no muscle tone at all little old church lady who would be about as round as she was tall who just wimped and whined and couldn't have done anything with her arms pre-op even, or had complications like the guy that had both knees done at once, was in excellent shape, but had a severe stroke while on the table in the OR

One of the worst I worked with was a lady who was actually a physical therapist and refused to wear the knee bendign machine (as was the post-op protocol at the time), refused to do her exercises, refused to get up and walk, etc. Of all the patients we had, *she* should've known better.

A bunch of my friends have had hip and knee replacements. Most had drastic improvement in their mobility and became pain free. That includes a lady in her 70s. The couple who were very overweight *and* didn’t do the rehab still had significant improvement and are also pain-free.

I have one friend now post knee replacement who is (I think) not doing the rehab but is normal weight; I’m interested to see how she does (well, I hope, as we also hire her to clean the house and do yardwork.). One close friend used up his knee post-retirement with three consecutive years of Mexico-to-Canada backpacking trips on the PCH, and after resisting for a year had knee replacement; he’s had the only complication among my friends, an infection that required opening up and debriding but not a full re-do.

I wouldn’t hesitate to have these joints replaced. Shoulder - I’m not sure about, those stories have not been as reassuring.

jyl, I had not heard of of debriding only. That's good news to me. And that tells me that a joint replacement recipient must monitor for infection through regular blood tests. There is no scientific basis for my taking antibiotics before going to the dentist. We both know this and we both know of circumstantial events regarding dental work and joint replacement infection. He writes a script for me to take an hour before a visit.