Tramping after TKR surgery

My father did carry on doing day walks of up to 30km after having both his done but strict instructions not to twist the knee so substantial care required. His surgeon told him he would get 15 years out of the knees but revised that to 10 when told about the tramping. Also kneeling is out and the knees will remind you if you forget this advise. He is 83 now though. Do the exercises they give you diligently or you will not get full movement back. Full movement though is defined as 90 degrees. Dad got 110 in one knee after a year not sure on the other but other things got in the way of that ones healing process. I remember dad complaining to the surgeon about the lack of movement and just being reminded that he was 70. Put them off as long as you can but dont be afraid In Wellington the best surgeon is Fred Philips if you can get him. He did a meniscus tear for me and both my father in laws hips

Beaudy, thanks Geeves. I've accepted things aren't going to be like they used to, but anything is better than the painful hobbling I'm doing atm. Cycling has even become a problem, which is the thing that pisses me off the most coz now I just can't burn the calories off :-D

Is it both knees or one? Before my father had his first one done he had a shorter crank on one side of his bike which helped. Otherwise swimming is the best no impact exercise you can get

there are other therapies too such as prolotherapy using autologous red blood cells or glucose and then all there is stem cell therapy which is not cheap. "Prolotherapy (also known as sclerotherapy, regenerative injection therapy or non surgical ligament reconstruction) and autologous blood injections are injection techniques used to treat connective tissue injuries that have not healed with other treatments".

Depends whats wrong with the knee. A common injury nowadays is cartilage tears and the quick easy fix is trim the torn edge. What they dont tell you is that this can mean bone to bone contact so 20 years down the track you have arthritis and although ACC picked up the tab for the cartilage trim they tell you this had nothing to do with the earlier injury so go away. By this time this options are quite limited. There used to be a common way to fix ball joints on cars which involved filling the joint with teflon. I dant know why a similar approach cant be taken with knees and hips. Mine have probably only got another 10 or 15 years left so hopefully they will have something like this by then and they wont need to take the chainsaw to my legs

In my case it is severe osteoarthritis in both knees. But it's my left one that gives me all the trouble. My right is as good as gold in comparison. I had the cartilage trimmed twice in my left knee back in 1991. My surgeon said then that I should take care of them as there wasn't much cartilage left. That was 30 years ago, so they haven't done too badly considering what I've done on them in that time. I had the cartilage trimmed in my right knee in 1994, so I guess it's days are numbered, too. I think I've inherited bad bio-mechanics, but doing dumb things like sprinting the downhill tracks off the Tararua tops when I was younger didn't help, either. It was fun at the time, tho.

Do you want to borrow my chainsaw? Good luck with the op

A few years ago (maybe 2013/14) we met a 70-something old tramper on the Rees-Dart; he’d had TKRs in both knees. Said it had slowed him down a bit, and he was more vigilant about keeping pack weight down, but he seemed to cope pretty well.

You might remember Don Millard from HVTC. Losing a leg didnt slow him down much.