- “Just as you should not have surgery until your knee is ready, you should not have surgery until your mind is ready. No matter what part of you knee is damaged, doctors still call knee surgery “elective,” that is, it can usually be done when it fits into your life. I routinely schedule surgery months in advance to correspond to the end of summer, school vacation, or even just to be ready for ski season. The important thing it to come to the operating room firing on all cylinders, physically and mentally. If you’re worried about work or your kid’s soccer game, you won’t give your knee the attention it deserves. Schedule your surgery when you can dedicate the time and energy it needs to get better. This usually means completely clearing your calendar for at least one week for a knee arthroscopy, three weeks for an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, and two months for a total knee replacement (TKR).”

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- “Whether your knee is injured from age, trauma, or an operation, the way you take care of it is the same: Decrease the inflammation and regain you motion. Everything else that leads to a healthy knee -balance, coordination, strength, etc.- will follow once you do these two things. As far as your knee is concerned, arthritis = injury = surgery, and this is why we treat them all the same.”

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- “A wonderful thing about any living creature, whether a person, puppy, or plant, is that it automatically attempts to heal itself after an injury. The problem is, left to its own devices, the knee does not necessarily continue to heal to the point where you can rip a slalom course, dunk a basketball, or sit comfortably on a plane to China. Those abilities require not just healing but also rehabilitation and training to return the knee to top condition.”

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Posted under Knee Surgery