Joint school

Well, today was interesting! As a requirement of the hospital that's performing my knee replacement surgery, I had to attend a virtual joint school. It was an hour and a half presentation that went over what to do before and after surgery. I'm not a huge fan of internet classes, but I was thankful I didn't have to turn on my webcam to attend. It was funny to watch the faces of the participants that chose to turn theirs on, though. Some of them looked so bored and others looked like they were extremely serious. I fell into the middle thinking I could read the Powerpoint slides myself. 

The nurse that hosted the class wasn't very good. She had a deadpan voice and I'm sure the whole thing was rote to her. It would have been nice to have had someone with a little more positivity, but hey, I guess they get tired of doing the classes so frequently. 

I was surprised at the number of people in the class today. There were 18. If that's average, and they do a class every day of the month for this area, that's a lot of people needing hips and knees replaced. 

I'm so nervous about the surgery! I don't want to have it done at all but it's gotten to the point I'm unable to walk well without a brace. And since I've already had 2 surgeries on this knee, a replacement was my only option according to my orthopedist. 

Getting old is not fun. It seems every day is filled with more aches and pains but, we have to be thankful for the medical advancements that help keep us going, don't we? 

While I was taking the online joint class, my husband was sitting beside me watching, too. All of a sudden he turned to me and said, "You sure are beautiful." Oh my gosh! My heart melted. After almost 32 years, he's still enamored with me. He has no idea how much I needed to hear that today. My body is so broken from past surgeries and medical procedures and it's about to get even uglier, but he still loves me. I am so blessed! 

Hopefully surgery will go well and I won't have any complications. I'm supposed to have physical therapy 2 times a week for 6 weeks. I'd better be up and "running" by October because I've got a trip to the mountains planned then and then later in the year, I have cruise. I'll be doing everything I can to have a quick recovery. 

As soon as I wrote that last sentence, a song from the old TV show my kids used to watch popped into my head - "Bend and stretch, reach for the stars, there goes Jupiter, there goes Mars. Bend and stretch, reach for the sky - stand on tippy toes, oh so high!" (Romper Room way back in the day!) I guess I'm mentally preparing for lots of pain ahead.