I don't know as yet the full plan. He will give it to me on the day of surgery. But I have complete faith in him. He replaced my left hip and I had zero pain during recovery (or subsequent). He has been doing a subv approach to knee replacement surgery for at least ten years and he does not use a tourniquet.

Every surgeon has her own routine. I don't feel knowledgeable enough to second guess my surgeon. I do know that he wants me to do ice (Game Ready Ice Machine) 6-8 times a day and that was advice I followed religiously for my hip.

I know that the first day or two after surgery is not representative (the nerve block may still be operative) but a week or so after my surgery I will post back here.

Interestingly, my older brother is having a knee replacement the same day but in a small university city in the midwest. His surgeon is very conservative and he does cut the tendon during his surgery and he does use a tourniquet instead of tranexamic acid. My brother is doing his proactively (no current pain but bone on bone) whereas I have considerable pain (including severe referred pain in my foot and ankle) with misalignment and bone on bone. It will be interesting to see how each of us do on recovery (all the data seems to show that ultimate recovery is pretty similar no matter which approach is used).