Have you ever felt amazing one day after PT… and then totally paid for it the next?
Yeah, me too.
It’s like you finally start to feel like yourself again—you get up, do a few loads of laundry, run some errands, maybe even make dinner—and then bam. The next day your knee’s angry, your body’s wiped out, and you’re sitting there wondering what you did wrong.
Here’s the truth: you didn’t mess up. You’re healing.
And those moments that make you stop? They’re not punishments. They’re pivots.
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Back when I was still walking around on my bone-on-bone knee, I noticed something strange. Every time someone at work would ask, “How’s your knee?” and I answered, “It hurts,”… it got worse.
I know that sounds weird. I’m not saying I made it up or was pretending. The pain was real. But the moment I gave it voice? It almost felt like it doubled.
Eventually, I stopped saying “it hurts.”
Instead, I’d say, “I’m actually really looking forward to having it replaced.”
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You know that panicky, can’t-think-straight feeling that creeps in before surgery?
Or when you’re in recovery and your brain just won’t quit spinning?
That’s not weakness. That’s your body trying to protect you.
Before my first knee replacement, I don’t think I slept more than a couple hours at a time. My brain was in overdrive running through the same questions on repeat: Do I have everything ready? Am I missing something? Did I plan the meals? Will the house still run without me?
I was the Jill-of-all-trades in our home—planning, cooking, cleaning, remembering every little detail—so handing over control for a while was brutal.
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Have you ever seen A Bug’s Life? It’s an animated Disney/Pixar film, and there’s this one scene where a leaf falls onto an ant trail. The lead ant freezes. He panics because the path he was following suddenly disappears. Then another ant calmly says, “It’s okay, I’ll help you,” and walks him around the leaf so he can keep going.
Well, in your knee replacement recovery, I’m gonna be that calm ant—the one who says, “It’s OK, I’ll help you with that.” I want to reassure you that what you’re experiencing is completely normal and actually a healthy part of your body’s healing process.
You go to sleep on surgery day, wake up with a new knee, and suddenly your brain can’t find the path it once knew. You know how to walk, lift your leg, or get up from the floor—but your body just doesn’t respond. It’s like a leaf dropped over your old movement pattern, and your brain can’t see the trail anymore.
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What if your biggest setback isn’t your knee — it’s your thoughts about your recovery?
That realization changed everything for me.
I remember the day it hit me. I was about six weeks out from my second knee replacement and realized I still wasn’t consistently hitting zero on my extension. Some days I’d get to 3 degrees, maybe 5 — but never zero. And that tiny number became a massive mental storm.
My calf hurt constantly. My foot and ankle were cranky. But the calf pain? It was brutal.
And I remember thinking something must be wrong. Something dire.
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