Front Porch: Knee replacement recovery pulls out unexpected wishes

I never thought I would miss weeding.

Weeding was one of the reasons I never jumped into decorative gardening in my middle years. Grubbing about in the dirt, not my thing, and I couldn’t grasp how some of my friends found such “dirt therapy” soothing.

I mean – hands and knees, sweat, digging, pulling and the time and commitment in order to clear the soil, the benefit being the privilege of doing it all over again in a few weeks, all through the growing season. Nope, not for me.

I was won over at the time of arrival of my gray hair, when the beauty of the planted annuals turned weeding into a tolerable nuisance. Still not majorly fond of it, but it was worth the colorful reward.

I have recently had total knee replacement surgery and am still in the early post-op weeks. I was able to get my flowers planted beforehand, so they’re out there … but I’m not. If only my yard were level and there were no steep embankments and rock outcroppings to navigate, I might be able to bend at the waist and safely pull a few noxious invaders, but, alas, that’s not the case.

Just recently, and with just enough flex in my knee, I can lean on my walker along the sidewalk in front of my front flower bed (the only level spot I’ve got) and gently tug out some of the invading marauders. And from that spot I glance only yards away on the south side of the walkway at the large sloping cutout area in my lawn where I planted a number of pretty things and see them getting surrounded by weeds.

They’re so near, yet so far, and I dare not try to move my balance-challenged body uphill to remove them, lest I end up snorting sod and doing damage to my knee .

Along the side of my front yard is the steep and rocky area in which some irises are in bloom and colorful shrubbery is doing its spring thing … all the time getting more and more surrounded by tall weeds.

I am itching to get out there and pull weeds. I can’t believe I just wrote those words.

Knee surgery rehab has been going pretty well. As advertised, it’s uncomfortable (a euphemism for painful) as efforts are focused on getting full extension of the knee (goal attained) and appropriate flexion (still working on that). But, sadly, nowhere in the post-op handbook is there a chapter on gardening as therapy.

When I wrote earlier about the gamut of obstacles we encountered getting this knee thing done, we still hadn’t cleared all hurdles, the final one being my husband’s visit to the ER five days before my surgery date. He had what turned out to be a parainfluenza virus No. 3 infection, which nearly caused the surgery to be canceled. He remained somewhat isolated and masked at home, while our son came over from Seattle to take me to the hospital and provide early care afterwards.

So many kind readers wrote to me about their own trials and offered quite a bit of sage been-there, done-that advice, including some that was gender specific. It was good information to have.

Some of the information provided was in conflict with other advice, but it was easy to adapt what was useful for me. The trickiest part had to do with medication for pain. Take it before you need it. Take it just when you need it. Intersperse the opioids with Tylenol. Stick with opioids (but what dosage?) for many weeks. Save the Tylenol for later. Etc.

I truly hate opioids and stopped taking them nearly as soon as I started, to my own detriment, I think. You can’t do the hard work of physical therapy effectively if the pain overrides everything, and sometimes Tylenol just isn’t enough.

After taking myself off the strong stuff for a whole week, I had some killer knee moments and, reluctantly, took one opioid pill. Made for a really good PT session, and relieved the pain.

I can be my own worst enemy, so lesson learned.

It’s also good to keep the mind busy and have distracting thoughts. I’ve got enough to do to keep my mind busy, and as for distracting thoughts … there is still that gosh darn crop of weeds right in my line of sight.

Grrr.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net.