What's a joint like this doing in a nice girl like me?

It's been awhile since I wrote here. Oh, I haven't been silent - just blogging elsewhere. I'm reactivating this one to share news of my upcoming knee replacement surgery. I'm starting out by reposting an entry I originally wrote on April 25, 2008:

My knee replacement surgery is scheduled for June 23. That gives me two months to think it over. I can still back out. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to go through with it. 99% sure.

Reasons I should have a knee replacement:

• The knee is bone-on-bone in two places. It's not going to get better. Cartilage doesn't regrow, and it can't be regenerated.
• I am sick and tired of not being able to walk for long distances.
• I want to be able to hike again. I won't be climbing Mount Everest, but if I could climb even a small hill it'd be great.
• I want to be able to climb stairs again. These days I either shuffle up one step at a time, never bending my left leg, or I cling desperately to the banister, wincing with every step. Downstairs is just as bad.
• This is a good time in my life to have it. I'm relatively young, and my sons are around to take care of me. I've got health insurance that will cover it.

Reasons I shouldn't have a knee replacement:

• I can still go about my daily activities. I walk well on level ground. Sometimes I even walk without pain.
• I can lean over and pick things up off the ground without pain. Last weekend, as I was raking my lawn and picking up the litter that blows into my yard from the nearby convenience market, I was thinking, would somebody facing knee replacement surgery be able to do these things?
• It doesn't hurt when I'm sitting or lying down.
• What if it's even worse after I have it done?
• I'm relatively young. Yeah, that was a good reason, but it's also a bad one. Chances are I'll have to have it done again 20 years down the road.

Having my knee replaced was never part of my life plan. Of course, neither was being single at my age... I had planned to be a successful author, or at least a successful something... instead, I've got a job as an administrative assistant. It's a good job, but it will never earn me the respect of my college classmates.

But I'm not here today to talk about my failures. I'm here to talk about my knee. At least it's just my left knee; my right knee is fine. It'll probably be even better once it can share the work with my left knee again.

One of my co-workers sent me a link to a great site, Edheads. This is a Virtual Knee Replacement exercise aimed at grades 7-12. If you want to know more about what happens during knee replacement surgery, it's great.
http://www.edheads.org/activities/knee/