BATEMAN: Knee

Along with more than 800,000 American geezers and geezerettes who will do the same this year, I had a creaky knee replaced back in April.

And I watched it all on TV.

Yep, on a bedside color monitor, I saw my surgeon remove my worn right knee then replace it with a synthetic number that should last for the ever-shrinking remainder of my life.

I saw hammering, sawing, wrenching, torqueing, screwing, tightening and, finally, stitching,

The procedure may have been exact, but it was not delicate: At one point, my Fremont surgeon Dr. Alexander Sah (yes, some pronounce it "Saw"), pounded on my new, synthetic kneecap so hard that the operating table shook.

But I had no feeling below the waist and viewed the drama with a measure of third-person, drugged-up detachment. If I can just keep my lunch down, I thought, I’ll be good to go. No more knee pain. Ever.

This is not exactly true: Once surgeons are finished, most patients can look forward to a long, at times arduous, recovery process. Your new knee starts out swollen and stiff. And only a painstaking regimen of flexes, lifts and stretches — often imposed by whip-cracking physical therapists — will make it right.

This was the fine print I failed to read before signing up for the surgery. Up until reality hit, I figured it would be kind of like the right-hip replacement I had done back in the 1990s: Leave it alone for a couple of months and it will be as good as new.

Plus, I had a Stanford classmate who was walking around solo with her new knee almost within hours. "I’ve had haircuts that were harder to recover from," she joked.

Not so with my stiff new knee: For weeks now, my days have been a nonstop regimen of flexes, bends and stretches that consume four hours or more. It is boring, at times painful, and will never be mistaken for fun.

But both Dr. Sah and Gary Deacon, my physical therapist and Yankee Hill Road neighbor, warn that not doing these exercises will freeze my operative right knee such that I will be stuck with a lifelong limp and lack of flexibility.

I’d walk around like Chester in "Gunsmoke" — but I’d never go out of character and couldn't come up with any fake stories about the Dodge City shootout that led to my injury.

Yep, without daily isometrics, I was warned, the knee-limp would last the rest of my life. Which has scared me into faithfully completing my hours-long daily routine again and again. "This is not supposed to be fun," warned Deacon, whose Sonora therapy office has for me doubled as a torture chamber. "But you’ll thank me later."

Yes, I have noticed improvement. Still, I’m not quite there.

Six weeks out from surgery, my replaced right knee is far better than it first was. But it's not yet as good as the old one was. In fact, yes, if a doc told me my new knee would never, ever get any better than it is today, I’d trade it in on the creaking, 77-year-old joint it replaced.

Of course this is not possible, so I persevere with lifting, stretching, striding and climbing — still aided on occasion by prescription painkillers. So, yes, there is a plus to knee surgery: You get to dose opiates during recovery.

But there is also an accompanying minus: The prescribed hydrocodone can cause constipation, so my surgeon's staff suggests that knee patients balance its use with laxatives. And this can be a very tenuous balance indeed.

Too many laxatives too soon, I found very early in my recovery, can result in dire, messy and smelly consequences. My "accident," eliciting a round or curses, came just feet away from a toilet and less than five days after my surgery.

"You OK?" shouted Mary, a longtime Calaveras County friend of mine nice enough to care for me for the first few days at home. "No," I shouted from the scene of the messy crime. "But STAY OUT OF HERE! Caring for me is one thing, but this is above and beyond."

Somehow, creaky knee and all, I completed the cleanup. And mercifully, have had no like episodes since.

In fact, I no longer need a caregiver, and have graduated from walker to cane to solo. I’m OK so far, and my gait does not give away that fact that I had knee surgery less than two months ago.

And, yes, I should have known recovery would not be simple after Dr. Sah's office sent me a 150-page "Knee Binder" that will guide my life for the next year or so. It's my Bible. I carry it everywhere.

And it warns that many patients "experience depression" at the four- to six-week period after surgery. "This is the time to have friends come over and cheer you up! Getting outside, using laughter, renting movies, music and anything distracting can be very uplifting."

My personal solution: A trans-Canada train trip with my daughter and son-in-law. As you read this, Hallie, Jack and I will likely be on board The Canadian, Via Rail's four-day train Vancouver to Toronto. So, yes, I’ll be walking, stretching and lifting throughout the leisurely 3,000-mile trip.

But I’ll also be enjoying great company, gourmet food on the streamliner's diner and spectacular scenery from its dome cars. And something tells me that my new knee — as well as the rest of me — will be feeling a lot better when our 10-day vacation is over.

And, who knows, maybe I’ll be ready to thank Gary Deacon for being my personal torturer after I get back.

Contact Chris Bateman at [email protected].

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