There are a couple things I really want you to know about swelling after knee replacement. Out of all the questions that land in my messages, comments and groups, one comes up over and over again.
“Is it normal to still be this stiff?”
And what I learned through my first knee replacement is this: yes, it can be stiff for a while. And “a while” is completely relative.
It depends on you.
How active you are or how sedentary you are?
Five mindset shifts that helped me move out of fear and into control
How can we not have fear of the unknown through our knee replacements, right?
It’s so crazy, because I caught myself constantly telling myself how scared I was of my knee replacement. And it wasn’t until I stopped saying I’m scared and started identifying what it was that scared me so much that I could get curious about why it was bothering me.
This was a process. It took me a while to slow down enough to really identify what I was most afraid of. What I noticed was that if I just kept telling myself, I’m scared, I’m scared, the fear kept coming back. Over and over.
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One of the biggest surprises for me after my knee replacement was the fatigue.
Sure, there was pain.
Yes, there was stiffness.
But the fatigue? That one caught me completely off guard.
I don’t know why I wasn’t prepared for it, but that bone-deep tiredness that hits after doing something that feels like nothing was not on my radar at all. Taking a shower was the first wake-up call. I’d wash my hair, dry it, and immediately want to sit down.
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Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I’ll never get better,” or “I’m always in pain”?
Yeah, I used to say that too—without realizing how much weight those words carried.
Here’s the truth: your words aren’t just sounds. They’re signals. And they’re either signaling healing or frustration. When you’re recovering from something as big as a knee replacement, every bit of your energy matters. What you say to yourself—out loud or in your head—sets the tone for how your body responds.
So today, I want to help you swap those “always” and “never” statements for words that actually move your healing forward.
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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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