Saturday

Made a few Easter Cards today. Might be a bit late to sell them but at least they are made now. Tomorrow i need to make R a retirement card and P a birthday card. What sort of card do you make for someone who is 100? It has to be pretty special i think
Pain wise today is a good day. Had my hair cut this morning and went round Asda so it is a very good day.
The car has been giving problems for days and now has decided to turn itself into a heap of useless tin. the suspension keeps going down and it finally went down never to rise again. It is back at the garage having been towed away but we are off to Cornwall on Thursday and i am panicking a little at the thought we may not get the car back in time.
T came and spent time with me today and we went up into the craft room and she made a lovely card for her G.G.Granny for Easter. Lets just hope we are there to see her open it.
Watching Create and Craft this morning and they had a Spellbinder package on. Really wanted to buy one of them but Easter is going to cost enough money. Have to be a good girl and just "wook".
J suggested yesterday that we opened a craft and coffee shop in Cornwall. That would be great wouldn't it? But then wouldn't it take all the fun out of the craft if you have to do it? At the moment i really love playing and i wouldn't want to lose that side.
It has been a very difficult week pain wise and i am really glad to have got to Saturday and a day of relative peace.
Each week the pain appears to be affecting me more. Is this just because i am looking to get rid of the pain altogether once all the operations are over do you think? Or am i getting weaker? I am certainly tired and a bit down about it all.
Chin up. Look forward to the crafting tomorrow and stop feeling so sorry for yourself.

Worried

So. I am getting more and more worried about how i will cope after the operation. My 'good' knee is giving more and more pain. My understanding from the Hospital is that they will teach me how to get about using my good knee to help the replaced one but if the replaced one is the stronger what the hell do i do then? whoops. Could be falling all over the place.


Took this checklist off the internet. 
 1. A Doctor Whom You Trust
 2. A Treatment Plan With Which You Are Fully Compliant
 3. A Healthy Lifestyle -- Including Exercise, Eating Well, and Sleeping Well
 4. Unshakable Perseverance
 5. A Manageable and Accessible Environment at Home
 6. A Manageable and Accessible Environment at Work
 7. Time for Yourself to Decompress
 8. Someone to Turn to for Emotional Support
 9. The Mindset That "Feeling Sorry for Yourself" Isn't an Option
10. A Hopeful Attitude for the Future


  So. Do I have all this?
 1. I trust my surgeon. Nice chap seems very keen to help me.
 2. I dont actually have a treatment plan, just a repeatable prescription

 3. I eat well but dont excercise enough and sleep is spasmodic, between being woken up by the    knees

 4. I am certainly trying not to let it beat me

 5. Home is becoming more fiend than friend. My problem. 

 6. Work is ok. I have leeway to move when i need, to take time off when it flares and to work from home when i cannot drive

 7. I have my card craft

 8 .Emotional support is the hard one. There are people i can talk to but the one person who should be there is the one who cannot cope with it.

 9. I allow myself a Poor Me moment once every three months or so. Gets it out of the way.

10 .My operation will give me a whole new lease on life. 

There are a lot of people out there in the big bad world with more pain, less hope, less chance of change than i have. People with no friends or family to support them. People with no positive attitude to bolster them. I am lucky in so many ways. 

I hope i always remember that. 

this is a knee with osteoarthritis.

I have seen my x-rays but not sure they looked like this, certainly they didn't have all these pretty colours.

Changing Pain

Wow the pain is changing again. A couple of weekends ago it was all along my right leg, mostly the back of the leg both the calf and the thigh. It was almost impossible to find a comfortable position for that leg. The knee felt swollen inside and the leg itself hard and uncomfortable.
Today i banged my knee, not hard, against my Scottie as i was going  upstairs. It gave me a bit of a twinge at the time but then it seemed to settle down. My son gave me a lift to the supermarket and although painful i was ok. When i got out of the car at work though my knee went into melt down mode and it took me a long time to walk it out of it to a point where i was comfortable.
Now the pain is spreading through the leg again and it is amazingly uncomfortable.
As this blog is a charting of my progress from pain to no pain i think today is one of those landmark days i will look back on from the other side of my op and be happy it is all over.

Spring has Sprung

What a lovely day. England at its best. Despite the cold the sunshine brings out all the best of the spring blossoms. I love Spring. Full of hope and light and the start of colours.
Arthritis pain has its ups and downs today. This morning it was bad, at Lunchtime it calmed down and then the late afternoon saw it back up to biting level again.
Warned my boss today that the length of time i need to recover after the operation may be longer than i had hoped. Seems you cannot drive for about 3 months. Ah well i am sure i will find a way.
If this year works out the way it might then i could spend a lot of it recovering from various ops, one knee, one varicose vein, other knee. Yay
Having a problem with the diet again. Had fruit salad and fat free yoghurt for breakfast, very good, followed by a pain au chocolat, very bad. For lunch i had chilli and rice and vegetables, very good, followed by yoghurt, very good, very good. For dinner the veg from last nights dinner and cold roast beef, very good. followed by cheesecake and ice cream. Very very very bad.
Yesterday was such a lovely day. I am very lucky to have such a family. I guess that is the balance of life. For having the best of families i balance that with the pain. Not a bad balance all taken into consideration.

Mothers Day

On Wednesday night i went to visit the Hospital where i will be having the op. Sort of an introduction to knee replacement evening. It was a good evening. Talks from physio and occupational therapists on what to expect and how to get the most out of the knee replacement operation. There was a woman there who had already experienced a lot of replacement surgery, great to hear from someone who has already been through it all and come out the other side. Also had chat about the op, what to expect in the Hospital, the anesthesiology etc..
It has made me realise there are going to be a lot of things i am not going to be able to cope with in this house when i first come out of hospital. One thing is the bathroom. At the moment i can climb in and out of the bath to take a shower, but after the op my only sound leg is going to be out of action.
Then there is the bed upstairs and the bathroom downstairs thats going to be a pain for a while far too many stairs.
still i am a lot better pain wise this week than i was last. Even a day and night at a conference haven't hit the pain levels i was experiencing last weekend. No idea what that was about, never felt so uncomfortable.
The pain is getting worse i think, or perhaps it is changing. Whatever it is more restricting now than it has ever been and my sleep patterns are changing because of it. I force myself to stay in bed until after 6 but it is getting harder to do.
Today is Mothers day and i have heard from the children by text or in person. I love my family so much and i love our Sunday dinners when we all get together. Sad that my eldest son and his wife and son are too far away just to pop in and join us for the roast beef but I will have spent time with all the others before the day ends.
Today i am a woman of numbers again. Mother of 5 and daughter number 3 to my own Mother.

A bad Day on Saturday

woke in the night and knew Saturday was not going to be the wonderful start to the weekend i had been hoping for. Managed to doze a lot and had some odd dreams, one of which had me waking in a panic when the alarm didn't go off at 6.30. Took a while to realise why it hadn't gone off.
As those in pain know anything on flare up day is a chore in more ways than one. I was determined not to give in and waste a day off so i managed to clean the kitchen and dust the sitting room and give the bathroom a bit of a spit and polish and crawled upstairs and dressed and played, for a short time, on a small scrapbook about my youngest grandson, Harry.
This afternoon i watched Breaking Dawn with my daughter and granddaughter but the pain became worse and worse and despite the full pain killers is still affecting me as i approach another bed time.
When i am bionic and without pain i will look back, i hope, at these days and thank my lucky stars that they are over.

A day of Thought

Today started really well. I felt that after the first thing in the morning stiffness i might actually have a far better day than  i have had for a while. I did my exercises - trying to straighten my knees by stretching the muscles in the back of my knee. I have to put my feet up on the foot rest and press down on my knees. Hurts like hell. The doc said it would hurt at the back of the knee but actually it kills the whole knee. Going to do it though because he says it will be worse if he has to try and straighten it when i have the op.
As well as the arthritis in both my knees i have it in my neck as well. A prolapse. Asthma. Varicose veins and some silly skin thing on my legs that makes them look stained.
Despite all that i think i am a generally healthy person.
This is the first year i have had a lot of time off with the pain.
Proud of that.
I wonder if i would give up work if i had a reasonable Lotto win? Not the big millions but perhaps enough to pay off this mortgage and buy myself the bungalow i keep going on about? I like the interaction and using my brain but i am not sure i wouldn't give in to the temptation to play at scrapping and card making full time if i could afford it.

This blog is to be my experience of before and after my knee replacement operation. A chance for me to chart the change to my life.
I am going to write when something matters or happens or occurs to me.
I want to make sure that when i, in my new bionic state, am pain free and back to walking the dogs on Cannock Chase, without sticks, I can remember what it was like before the operation and never take anything for granted.
I have been crippled with Arthritis for the past 10 years and am now on two sticks and in a lot of pain every day. Up until last year I thought there was going to get less and less colour in my life and the pain would become more and more to the front of my life. But then i was told i could have one knee replaced. Yay Yay Yay. I am on a waiting list.
I am trying to lose weight because i am not a small woman and i want this operation to be a success. I am trying not to make plans but its hard not to.
There are a lot of people in this world who live every single day in pain. Who never complain. Who never expect special treatment.
I am not one of those.
I whinge
I shout
I swear
I might even give in to a tear or two from time to time.