My Beautiful Girlfriend is now a Bionic Woman with a Brand New Knee. Of course, the New Knee to which I’m referring is her Lower Knee, not her Hiney. Her New Knee, after all Need Not Be Capitalized; but this was a Pretty Big Event at Our House so I just thought I’d use Capital Letters indiscriminately to Point This Out.

My poor baby has had a bad knee for some time now… and finally decided that she’d been hobbling in pain for more than long enough. Her cartilage slowly wore away to the point where there was nothing left as a cushion at all. She braved cortisone shots for a couple years; and those did help for some time. But she was told there would come a time when the shots coupled with pain medication would not be enough.

“I always told the doctor he could have my knee when I’m 60,” she’d say when the pain became excessive.

She’s 61 now, and got her wish not quite two weeks ago. Her New Knee did not come without some ouchy stuff though. It’s a pretty big deal… this knee replacement surgery. I told friends that it must have been pretty gross (and weird) to be in the operating room, watching the surgery. I envisioned the doctor running a nice, shiny Husqvarna chainsaw, spraying bloodly, fleshy sawdust all over the place as he went in to cut the old out to make room for the new. Maybe it doesn’t quite happen that way, but I’m sure that it would have been way more than anything I would like to have seen.

God bless the folks that do that stuff. I mean, I can respond when there’s an emergency and do the right thing; but if I were called upon to assist while someone was getting cut open, I’d pass out in a little less than 12 nanoseconds. Fortunately for us, one of the best knee surgeons in this area did the job, and there were no complications… well except pain of course. Amazing though it may be, knee replacement surgery is no cake walk. No, they don’t even want you stepping on cake!! I’m very glad of that because I’ve never really enjoyed cake with footprints in it.

On her first day home, it was slow going; so I greased the floor with cooking oil so she could slide about with ease. I also put together a rather interesting apparatus for helping her get into bed. It involves large stones, ropes and pulleys. When you pull the large lever, the cat screams while the launching platform lifts her out of her walker and into the air. If all goes well, the shock bladders inflate quickly and she is sloowwwwly lowered into the basement. From there it’s just a simple matter of throwing the soiled laundry down the chute to cushion her non-skid slippers into the variable shaker linkage.

She’ll thank me for all of this sometime in the future I’m sure.

Just to prove I can be a Good House Helper and a Nurse, I’ve been cooking some of our pillow cases with low fat mango peelings while setting up her medications according to the phase of the moon and the color of the snow behind the garden shed. I hope to brighten up her day a bit when I slip some pureed asparagus into her oatmeal, but the next few meals will be much less mainstream. Cream of watermelon soup, eggs on a stick, and buttered newspaper with Chicken Bone Surprise will all be on the menu for tomorrow and the rest of the weekend for that matter.

I must say, though, that without the kindness of friends this journey would be much more difficult. We are very fortunate indeed. We remind each other that this New Knee business is temporary… better days lie ahead. Loved ones who are near and dear to our hearts are plagued with much more serious matters.

Perhaps I should go be a House Help Nurse for them too!!

Or not.

As far as I know, these guys were NOT involved in any of the procedure…