I started back with my regular work schedule the same week we put the clocks forward, and in retrospect that was not a great plan. I am so, so tired. I’m doing okay, but I am so tired. I am eating a lot of sugar. (And protein! I know to eat plenty of protein! But also really a lot of sugar.)

Tomorrow I will be nine weeks post-knee-replacement-surgery. It turns out that post-surgical status, like pregnancy and the age of new babies, is counted in weeks, but I don’t know how long we keep doing that. The physical therapist is still counting it in weeks; I saw the surgeon last week and he was still counting it in weeks. (But I wish to avoid being the knee-parent who says their knee-baby is 37 weeks old.)

Although, interestingly/irritatingly, when I saw the surgeon I was one day shy of 8 weeks, and he said I was 6-7 weeks. I was not inclined to keep arguing the point, but what happened is he came into the room and said “So let’s see, you’re about 6 weeks post-surgery?,” and I said “8 weeks tomorrow!,” and he said, “No, the surgery was January 9th [the surgery was in fact January 7th], so you’re 6-7 weeks.” Okay! I mean, even if the surgery had been January 9th, which it wasn’t, I would have been 7 weeks 4 days, but I’d already corrected him once. He took a little video of me straightening the knee and bending it, and walking a few steps, and his voice recording on that video said I was 6-7 weeks, but I was actually nearly 8 weeks. Then he had me bend my knee, and he measured it before I was ready, and he said it was 124 degrees, but I’ve been consistently bending it 134-136 degrees in physical therapy, and ONCE even got it to 140 degrees.

I complained richly to the physical therapist about all this, and she said my surgeon has a wonderful reputation for his work in the operating room, but not so much otherwise. Which we both agreed is the way we’d prefer to have it, if our surgeon can only have a wonderful reputation in one area. BUT I WAS ONE DAY SHY OF 8 WEEKS, NOT 6-7 WEEKS. She also said that what he was looking for was that I could bend it at least 120 degrees, since that was the 6-7-week goal, so he probably didn’t even find it relevant that I could bend it more. She measured it for me, even though she hadn’t been planning to do so on that particular visit, just so we could both look at the 136 degrees and feel a little huffy about it.