I haven't mentioned my knee here lately. It continues to heal, slowly but certainly. I thought I'd be more mobile by this many days since the second surgery but since things are moving in the right direction, I've decided to be fine with it. I get out once in a while but mostly I stay in, writing or visiting with chums who drop by, minimizing my trips up and down stairs, which is the main time I have any discomfort. I have stopped taking the industrial-strength pain-killers and now get by with a minor one that helps unstiffen the joint and make me ow less frequently.
The main concern is whether the infection will return. As you might recall, I picked up some bacillus during my first knee operation that after one month caused said knee to swell, ache and turn not just any pink but that deep, rich Susan G. Komen pink. A second operation was done to cleanse and since then, scientists have been attempting to identify just what it was that was growing inside me. The samples they extracted have stubbornly refused identification. They simply won't grow in the petri dishes…which may be a hopeful sign. If the thing won't grow in the lab, maybe it won't grow again in me.
Encouraging it to not grow within me are antibiotics. I take an oral one (Doxycycline) and then I'm nearing the end of a six-week daily regimen of an intravenous one (Ceftriaxone). Each day, a nice nurse drops by for ten minutes, checks my vitals and infuses me with the latter but that's almost over. So then it'll just be wait 'n' see if the pink comes back. If it does, I'm in for not one but perhaps two more surgeries. If it doesn't…Yay! The odds, I'm told, are in my favor but not by quite as wide a margin as I'd like.
If all goes well, I'll be walking normally by about New Year's, give or take a holiday. I dunno when I'll resume driving but that will be the marker that I'm really over this.
A friend of mine who has been told he needs the same surgery is reticent because of what happened to me. I tell him he shouldn't be. The odds of picking up an infection like this are, like the bacillus in question, very tiny. There's a risk of it in any kind of surgery and that's not a reason to never have surgery. The basic knee replacement procedure is sound and — assuming a skilled surgeon such as I had — not risky at all. Not having the surgery would in my case have been (eventually) a lot more painful and probably even riskier.
Folks ask if I'm angry and upset about all this. I don't see what the point of that would be. It wouldn't make my knee heal any faster. If something spills, you mop it up. If something breaks, you fix it. My knee went bad and I'm doing what it takes to make it and me functional again. And let's be honest: There are worse things that can happen to a guy who loves to write than to have to stay in all day. If and when I need to have the other knee switched for an artificial one, I may try to time it for when I'm ready to finish that novel I've been thinking about for decades.