"Oh, how nice! You will get a new knee!' I hear this more and more often from people I inform that I will soon have a total knee replacement. I understand their reaction. After years of doom, gloom, operations and complications, it sounds like light at the end of the tunnel. But why doesn't it feel that way?
Double
It feels double. I hate that buzzword that gets overused and overused. Ambivalent then sounds much more chic. Whichever way you look at it:it remains a major operation with a long rehabilitation and a success rate of eighty percent. My youngest daughter started crying when I told her about the procedure. “But then your face turns white again and you lie in bed for days. I have no sense in that," she sobbed passionately. Well, I don't feel like it either, I thought. But I said something else:'But how nice is it if I can go to the Efteling again?' Her face brightened immediately.
Too young For years I was told I was too young for a 'new knee'. And although that sounds wonderful to women at a certain age – I'm too young for something for once – I detested that statement. Why too young? Now I have young children who want to do everything with me, now I have my own company and I want to dance with my friends in a crazy mood, late at night. When I soon reach the average age of a new knee owner (72 years), all of this will no longer be so urgent. And yes, I know that the prosthesis can only be replaced once. If I assume that it will last 15 years (so a total of thirty years with two prostheses) then I'll be 79 if a problem arises. For the sake of convenience, I assume that by then a new generation of prostheses with appropriate ingenious operations will have been devised. However? "Who lives, who cares" is my motto. And now there is no choice:walking is becoming increasingly difficult and the knee surgeon (after thirteen operations) sees no other options.
Hinde
With a little luck, fantasy and exaggeration I'll be hopping through life like a young doe in a few months. No more sour blogs but merely delighted reports of beautiful days out and a holiday without crutches. Just bite through the sour apple apple. Without dentures and with my own teeth. That again.
Who is Marie-Anne? Marie-Anne, 48 years old, is married and mother of three daughters. She has a serious cartilage problem. It all started after a skiing accident, but hereditary factors and factors that doctors still don't know much about also play a role. Every other week she blogs about her (patchwork) family, care in the Netherlands, her knee and other things that occupy her.
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