I’m now six weeks out from my knee replacement surgery and I’m doing well. I’m walking two miles plus several days each week, getting strength training, and eating well (even though added desserts are somehow weaseling their way into my diet each day). Sleep is the only problem area and I am gradually getting more rest with the help of medications. Life is good.
Surgery is one of those events that hyper-focuses your attention. Like death or divorce, surgery brings your full attention to one point on the space-time continuum and holds it there. This may be a helpful survival mechanism for a few weeks while you get your bearings. But it’s important to know when to let that hyper-focus go, to scan the whole environment again, making sense of the big picture.
I can say for certain that I put my life on hold during the weeks after surgery. Just this week I have started considering a plan to lose the 20 pounds that came, unbidden, in the past two years. And I have not even committed to going on a diet, something that sounds really unappealing to me right now. Golly, I hate to say it, but I feel really good. I could be happy in this body for a while. Blasphemy?
Stop Losing and Win 