Mostly because I don’t have enough to do (I’m still not allowed to swim. I can’t fly off anywhere. I can’t even go to the flipping dentist, for Pete’s sake), I think about this one thing a whole lot:

How do people who don’t have flexibility in their jobs or the means to be off work even manage to have this surgery?? I mean, I work from home, so I can manage because I can get work done at my most awake hours (and for anyone who has had this surgery, you know those hours are between 2:30 am and 4:30 am.)

But, how do people really manage 6 to 8 weeks off work? I could no more manage to get myself into an office and sit at a desk at this point than I could vote for a republican. There’s also the matter of not being able to dress myself without some help which could pose a few issues.

So, I keep telling myself how fortunate I am to have the luxury of time to heal. And for a nanosecond, that helps. I quickly return to (figuratively) pacing the floor and ordering things off the internet to keep me busy.

Without further ado, if you are getting ready for this surgery, here are some things to consider at the six-week point:

1. You will be given a list of exercises to do before your surgery. Most will involve strengthening your quads. They are important, of course, though none will likely involve building upper body strength. So, lemme ask you this…can you dead-lift 150 pounds (or more, as the case may be)? No?? You are SO not ready for surgery.

At some point in your recovery, likely on NIGHT ONE, you will need to pull your entire body up into a sitting or standing position, using only your skimpy little biceps. At some point, your arms will fail you and you will lose your grip and end up punching yourself in the face. True story.

2. Curbs at the six-week point are terrifying. They probably were terrifying at the four-week mark, too, but my handlers didn’t let me out of the house after the aforementioned disastrous Costco trip.

Oh yes, you will practice 4” steps in therapy (WHICH YOU WILL NEVER ENCOUNTER IN REAL LIFE BECAUSE NO HOUSE CONTAINS 4” STEPS, PT PEOPLE!) You will be lulled into thinking you are a pro at this whole step thing.

And then, one day, when you are out and feeling rather confident with your new ergonomic cane (the one you hope conveys the message, I AM NOT FEEBLE AND ANCIENT, I SIMPLY DEMOLISHED MY KNEE ON A BLACK DIAMOND SKI RUN), you will encounter a curb.

Did you know that typical curbs are 6” high? Two inches makes a lot of difference. (Get your mind out of the gutter, people.)

As you frantically look around for a sign post or a parking meter or any port in the storm like a passing octogenarian’s arm (we cane people have to stick together, I tell ya), you realize you will need to walk half a block down the road to find one of those sloping entry thingies onto the sidewalk. You will then turn around and head back to your car because you’ve had enough exercise for the day and no takeout salad is worth this BS.

3. In the evening, 6:30 pm will come and you will look at the clock and wonder how the f*ck you are going to make it until 7:30 pm without passing out from exhaustion and boredom. Because you have spent six weeks recuperating, you have watched every Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu series, read all the books, and have resorted to Flipboard updates on the impending royal birth.

There is simply nothing left to do as you elevate and ice for the 9,000th time. I have no great wisdom here – just that you will be beyond exhausted because sleeping is a chore (or more accurately, trying to sleep is a chore) and you will only be able to string a few hours together, so you should be tired. The boredom would be a real issue if you weren’t so damn tired all the time.

Having said that, here are a few ideas: the Wayfair app is an awesome distraction. Neither your spouse nor your bank account will think it is all that awesome, mind you, but you will soon realize that the perfectly fine Persian rug in your living room could use an update. And those lovely arm chairs you’ve had for decades? Craigslist, baby.

You will also begin taking bids from house painters, because why the hell not. Once you get them scheduled, you will start re-designing your master bath and schedule a visit with your contractor to come give you an estimate. You will not tell your spouse about this appointment for a few more days.

4. In one of those pulling-myself-up-with-my-arms situations (after the sciatica thing but before the black eye thing mentioned in #1), an old friend came to visit. This particular friend is a flipping pain in the neck, and I have to take copious amounts of drugs to deal with her.

Like RBG, she goes by her initials, HCD. Herniated Cervical Disc has visited me before, and prior to knee surgery, I thought nothing could be more painful. In fact, I still believe that. But, old HCD came back for a visit because, she said, “What gave you the idea that you could dead lift your body weight and not pay for it, Einstein?”

For this visit, I skipped all the kvetching and went straight to my surgeon and asked for Prednisone which helped last time. They were on it lickety-split and sure enough, within 48 hours, I was pain free. Bullet dodged.

All this is to say, upper body strength is at least as important as lower body strength and if you don’t take it seriously, you too will think knee pain is the least of your worries.

5. Costco is still a bitch. Another visit hasn’t made me think any differently. Having said that, I have elevated the pull-the-cart and walk-with-a-cane ballet to an art form. It’s not pretty, but it gets me through a grocery store.

6. Speaking of Whole Foods. That time when you were so excited because it was 8:00 am and you still had enough energy that you sort of felt like a distant cousin of your old self (which is a massive improvement over the who-the-hell-is-this-person-I-am-living-inside-of self), you think, I’m going to do a little shopping just like old times! By my-ever-loving-self, no less!

And, just as you pull into their parking lot, you remember that while you can wheel the cart to your car après-shopping, you have no such advanced mechanism at your house to get those groceries from car, up the stairs, and into the kitchen. So, you will be resigned to sitting in their parking and ordering your groceries on their app, before rushing to beat their driver’s impending arrival at your house.

7. At the six-week mark, you can host your Book Club and make a homemade lasagna for the main course as long as you understand two things. It will take you 6.2 hours to make said lasagna. Also, you must have a spouse who will actually do all the work while you supervise. Expert tip: start on the wine early.

8. Sympathy from family is quickly waning. They are tired. They just want a home-cooked meal, but because of #3 above, there is no damn way that is happening anytime soon.

You’ve had take-out Thai twice this week. You’ve had take-out Indian. You count a baked potato as a meal and you’ve resorted to God-awful Domino’s pizza more than once. And that’s just this week. You will Google Blue Apron in a moment of weakness.

9. One positive – you spend a lot of time on the phone talking to old friends whom you haven’t had the time to catch up with over the past few years because you now have nothing but time. You get long visits from some of them and you try hard not to make the conversation about your damn knee. You vow to make these friendships more of a priority than your normally over-scheduled calendar allows once you get your literal walking papers.

10. Finally, you see light at the end of the tunnel. You’re at six weeks! You’re walking (okay, limping) almost unaided (except for curbs!) You are finally able to sleep fully on your side! You are nearly THERE!

And just as you are patting yourself on the back after a great PT session, your therapist, Brett-the-Bubble Burster, tells you to go ahead and get on his schedule. through the end of March. Seriously, dude. WTF.

Today is my one-month knee anniversary (not to outshine my kid’s birthday, but the two are not unrelated – he was a big baby and wanted to be carried…a lot, which may or may not have contributed to this whole knee surgery business.) 😊

The surgery was, as everyone told me (and I didn’t quite believe) a beast. I have new respect for anyone who goes through this. It’s not the pain that has been the biggest hurdle for me – in fact, I was off all the opioid stuff in the early days, post-surgery. Rather, it has been the extraordinary impact on daily life.

I am quite grateful that I have a job that allows me to work from my home office, that my husband’s and son’s jobs offer enough flexibility to allow them to be with me for most of the past three weeks, and when they weren’t, good friends, have stepped in with phone calls, flowers, visits, and chats. Four weeks with one’s own company alone will send one to the loony bin faster than Donald Trump can get on a plane to Florida.

If you are following along because you have had or are planning to have knee surgery, you already know that flexion and extension are the two almighty hallmarks of progress. In those areas, I have excelled and reached all the goals set out for post-knee surgery patients. Yay for me.

But, for a variety of reasons, none easily explained, my quad muscle has decided to hibernate over the winter, meaning, I can’t lift my leg from a sitting or lying position. Completely fine standing up, but it does impact gait, so while I graduated to the cane a few weeks ago, I remain a hobbling, slower-than-a-snail, mess. My therapists swear it will happen and admonish me to just stick with the program. It is not an uncommon thing – but, it is panic-inducing to me.

I have found it amusing to note, as I am crossing a street (not that I have been anywhere by myself, mind you – my handlers are always at my side…living the Kardashian life, I tell you.) Anyway, drivers initially are so kind if they see me standing and waiting to cross (a lady with a cane makes people nice, it would seem). But, if they catch me hobbling up to the crosswalk in the moments before, they quickly lay on the gas to get by lest they wait an interminable 10 minutes as I cross in front of them.

Sleeping remains a challenge.

Physical therapy has been way more difficult than I had imagined, and I find I am less motivated to do the exercises on my own to the extent they do them in the gym (but I DO them, just not quite at the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar level they might like.) To that end, I am looking to hire an at-home trainer who can help get this train moving more quickly. That said, I look forward to seeing my therapist twice a week – he’s a good guy and both he and his assistant push me gently to hit those goals.

File this under, “never say never”. These are things I never thought I would appreciate (or, in some cases, do):

1. Putting pants on from a standing position. I long for the day. If someone makes a video of themselves putting their pants on while standing up, I will watch it on repeat all-the-damn-day long, let me tell you.
2. Having a male nurse help me to the bathroom. That modesty ship sailed about 30 minutes post-surgery.
3. Having my tailbone electrocuted by my husband.
4. Oh, you want an explanation for #3, do you? It involves newly-presenting sciatica as a result of overworking my leg, a Tens Unit, and well, the rest you can figure out.
5. Having my adult son offer to help me to the bathroom. I drew the line there – if there was any motivation to get myself up and around, it was that.
6. Missing the walker. I made a deal with myself that I wouldn’t get to go out of the house until I was off the walker, so I pushed to get off it, but I miss her. Even though the chick scratched my hard-wood floors, she served a very good purpose.
7. Threatening to hurt someone with my wooden cane. One word: Costco.
8. On the topic of Costco, if you have knee surgery and you think you are a bad-ass, save that bad-assery for something other than Costco. You will fail at this outing and end up on the benches with a lot of $1-a-slice eating-people while you wait for your able-bodied family member to pick out the exact WRONG kind of cheese.
9. Ordering groceries from Whole Foods online. The WF driver visited so often, he and I are now Twitter-buddies.
10. Talking to myself. Rather, talking to my knee. “Oh please, you never gave birth, so stop your whining.”

I am positive my husband and son could write their own top-ten list.

As my husband remarked the other day, “Oh, so this is what the sickness and health thingy was all about…,” as he pulled the umpteenth bag of ice from the freezer for my knee.

Also, he has been cured of ever wanting to “get in the kitchen and mix it up” again. He loves bowls – you know, those ubiquitous meals that contain rice, greens, roasted veggies (in our house), toppings, and crunchy things? Two weeks ago, when he suggested making them, I walked him through the two-hour prep time of chopping, roasting, mixing, and sauce-making so he could make them for both of us.

He is unlikely to request another house-made bowl ever again.

There are some upsides to this knee business.