It’s easy to forget the pain.

We all do it. As a woman and a mother, I’m convinced that if more women remembered the discomfort of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, there would be a lot more only children in this world. But as time goes by, we forget.

The same holds true for my knee surgery. It was only a little over 5 weeks ago, but I set the date for my other knee to be replaced in my follow-up appointment earlier this week. Just like any other choice we willingly make to go through pain, for whatever reason, we do it because there’s a promise of something better on the other side.

Back to the familiar and wonderful feeling of being in control.

Despite going through many years of often excruciating knee pain, that memory is already fading — perhaps because it was temporarily replaced by post-op pain and healing. Before, I knew there was only a limited amount of improvement I could possibly see; now, every day brings a noticeable improvement.

Forgetting pain is a good and natural thing. Forgetting the lessons, though? The things you swear to yourself you’ll never, ever do, again? No. I caused irreparable harm by allowing myself to become so overweight that I damaged parts of my body. Typically, people who need total knee replacements are at least 10 to 15 years older than I am, and my doctor first brought it up with me roughly 12 years ago.

We’re humans, though, and we often tend to forget the lessons learned in times of stress and return to our previous norms. So when, by necessity, I had to change my normal way of eating because of surgery, and I gained weight because of it, I feared that part of me that might see that as a return to normal — the normal I knew for most of my adult life.

I found myself yearning for the feeling I have when I am totally in control. That’s where I feel the best. It’s my comfort zone, and where my body and brain moves toward. The best part? That’s the normal I’ve come to know over the last nearly five years, rather than the destructive normal that came before.

Sometimes, the lessons learned aren’t enough to keep us from repeating mistakes of the past, but every day, this feels a bit more like coming home. The path to home isn’t far away, now, at all.

So here I am, three days after total knee replacement surgery, surprised that I have relatively coherent thought and even more surprised that I fared as well as I did.

I’ll probably jump around on my observations a bit; I’ll be on some entertaining pain meds for a bit and — well — staying focused on any given thing isn’t my strong point at the moment. (Squirrel!)

I’m always surprised when my weight isn’t an issue, because I’ve lived the majority of my life where it has been, particularly in medical circumstances. If anyone at the hospital thought it was a concern, they didn’t say so, but in my experience, I’d find that unlikely. Any time weight was mentioned, it was me doing the mentioning; I did have an issue where my epidural for surgery didn’t wear off as quickly as expected and I couldn’t lift/feel/move my legs when the physical therapy folks came by. They asked me if lifting my legs had ever been an issue before surgery; I mentioned that yeah, in a way it had been since I used to weigh 371 pounds and mobility was definitely an issue.

SQUIRREL!

But otherwise? No. I got a very kind high five from a charge nurse when I brought it up; after all, I was (a) graduating to the next phase of my physical existence and (b) drugged, and therefore, I don’t recall why I mentioned it.

I was surprised when two women managed to move me around on a sheet. You know, pick me up and move me where they needed me. I know this is one of the more common skills in a medical setting, but I don’t recall anyone ever doing that before, and it felt extremely odd to be lifted. Even odder to not have them call in male assistance.

As for my recovery, I’ve also been surprised. Other than the snafu of the epidural, my pain rarely got over a 4 out of 10, I was in decent spirits (and happy to be alive), the staff at the hospital was great, and not only did the surgery go off without a hitch, but the surgeon used a new method of sealing my incision that’s only been in use for his office for a week. Half the patients got it; I was in the lucky half.

I head to physical therapy next — and this is where the physical and mental work begins. The physical is expected; I just didn’t think it would start before I arrived. My surgeon advised my husband that yes, bone spurs were blocking my range of motion in my right leg; I knew this. I could neither bend my knee to even a 90-degree angle (normal upright sitting posture) or flatten it. I also knew my knee was out of alignment as it progressively worsened over the years, but I didn’t realize it would require straightening my knee.

Sure, that makes sense, but my muscles and ligaments have compensated for years, and now comes not only the retraining of those groups but my own mental blocks regarding what I can and can’t do. I have not climbed or descended stairs normally in decades, just as an example.

In a lot of ways, though, I realize what I’m facing; I’ve been here, before, both with being my husband’s caretaker through two knee surgeries, as well as progressing from temporary wheelchair and cane to around 8K steps a day. That process took years; this one will be accelerated in comparison.

I’ve been both prepared and surprised by this short three days. I’m looking forward to what comes next — and the reassurance that when the left knee is replaced, it won’t be as complicated as the right one. It isn’t as deformed as the right one was.

One final note, I asked what the chances were of getting my removed knee parts as a paperweight set. That was a no-go, but I’m not sure I really wanted to see it, anyway.

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know that for the last year or so, I’ve included a song for each blog. I usually tack it on the end, and whatever meaning you derive from it is up to you. I used “I Will Survive” a little over a year ago, but didn’t include why this particular old disco hit holds special meaning to me.

This time, I’m going to invite you into some of the darkest moments of my young life, when I was scared, furious, disappointed, shattered. I haven’t talked about my Inner Walt in a long time, because that voice has grown steadily quieter; that’s the voice of my (long dead) father, telling me that I wasn’t good enough, not strong enough, not pretty enough, not talented enough, not smart enough.

I graduated high school when I was 17; it wasn’t early — I was just young for my class. I graduated with the full expectation of attending college in the fall, with full academic and music scholarships. I quit my full-time job, packed my things, and just a couple days before I was to leave, my father decided otherwise. Just before the fall semester was to start, he pulled me out of college. I was a minor; he was allowed to do that. His selfish reasons were entirely his own, but I was put in the unenviable position of having to beg for my job back, mostly because he had left his job, and made no effort to find another.

In a matter of a couple weeks, I went from being a kid with a dream to an adult having to help support a deadbeat father.

This song — Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive — became my personal battle cry. I had a 45 single, and I used to play it when he wasn’t around, belting it out. I was furious with him; he was an unstable man, and this was just another event in a series of abuses toward my mother and myself.

You’re not snuffing *my* torch, Jeff.

To make a long and painful story short, I picked myself up and kept working toward my goals. I never gave up on my dream of college. I never gave up on trying to improve my lot. Not long after that fateful autumn, a chain of events led to him deserting my mother and me, which turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to either of us.

That chain reaction started with him walking in on me one day when I was off from work, belting out I Will Survive at the top of my lungs, along with the record player. He was furious and we had a screaming fight, but it was truly the first time I actually fought back; I usually just hid in my room until the storm blew over, but not this time. I stood up to him, and I kept standing up to him until the day he left.

Over the following few years, I managed to fight my way back to college, where I majored in music therapy and music education. It’s no coincidence that these songs I choose have meaning, friends; music is its own behavioral therapy. Although I ended up not choosing that as a career path, music has always been my pulse.

A couple summers ago, when I was in Mexico, the band at the resort played — you guessed it — I Will Survive. Like everyone else there, I sang along, and then the singer handed me the microphone. And I sang it. I belted it out. The meaning for me, now, is different; and victorious.

When I sang along with the resort band, I was sitting in a wheelchair. I was in a prison of my own making. I have fought hard to find my way out, and in just a few short days from now, I’ll take the next step toward breaking the chains that hold me back. Like those days many years ago, I’m in charge of my own fate, and I will work hard to be free of the things that bind me.

In just a few short days, I’ll have the first of two knee replacement surgeries. For a while, it’ll likely seem like I’m retracing the steps I had to take to get out of that wheelchair, walk on my own, build up stamina and control, and move forward — but I’ve done it, before.

I will survive.

At the moment, my weight is all over the place. I had hoped to split the difference before knee surgery; you know, actually weight as much as I’ve lost. I’ve been that close at my low; a mere 3 pounds or so above it.

But I’m letting impending surgery get in my head. I’m carrying both excess water weight and probably a few pounds of just flat out real weight — meaning I have weight to re-lose. I’m nowhere near endangering my surgery, but I’ve noticed that when my weight occasionally drifts up (usually because of something daunting on the horizon), I mentally flog myself for it instead of giving myself a bit of a break.

Making sure I’m not making excuses.

The truth is that I need to eat right now. I’m not eating anything off plan; just more of it, as I work to overcome both borderline anemia and a potassium deficiency. I understand how this came about; I am on doctor-prescribed supplements, but I also need high-quality food. I’ve had to accept that weight fluctuations right now aren’t as important as being healthy enough to meet surgery head-on. I will also have to adapt during recovery — and then I can work on getting back to where I was before all this came about.

I don’t like being patient about anything, but I know patience is what I need, at the moment. I also need to understand that just because my brain does a little flip out any time my weight doesn’t do what I hope for, does not mean that I’ve gone backward. This is, for the time being, part of my process.

There is still a part of my brain that screams at me that my weight loss isn’t legit because I’ve gained a few pounds back. (And by “a few”, I mean I’ve been rambling around 5-10 pounds above my low.) I know most of it is water because of the fit of my clothes and my body’s reaction. But there’s a gremlin that kicks a chunk of my non-thinking brain and tries to insinuate that I might as well have gained back all of a 183-pound loss — which is obviously flawed logic.

I’m staying busy, though. I’m not using this as an excuse to eat bad things. I’ve been keeping up with my step goals and expect to have 8,000 steps/day by the time surgery rolls around. I’m doing everything I can to get to the other side of this, because I know I’m giving myself one of the greatest gifts I can: working hard to get past the things that hold me down.

(Sorry, no video today — I’m short on time.)