total knee replacement

@jimk849 The equipment at my health club asks weight and age and tells you what to strive for. I am supposed to hit 127. Occasionally I do manage to do that, but not often.
JK

I use the 220 minus your age that is suppose to be your max heart rate and you can exercise between 50% and 85% of max. Trouble is as you get in shape it's harder to get your heart rate up there. So those upper 120's for me is pretty close to max. Cardio is important to me as I have high coronary calcium and I work to keep my cholesterol down. Just had a nuclear stress test in Nov. came back all good, but you never know. I'm beginning to feel like an old used car. haha

@jimk849 Ahh, I feel better now! The number they are giving me is 85%, so what I am doing isn't too bad. Thanks. I knew there was a way to figure this out but I was just too lazy to, I just let the equipment do it for me.

I think many of us are feeling the same way. As a fridge magnet I have says, "getting old isn't too bad when you consider the alternative".
JK

@jimk849 Yes, the old, "used car" feeling is mutual! Between a leaky valve (heart) and wiring problems (neurological) the old car analogy works well. Thanks for today's smile.

@contentandwell : partial mystery solved!!!!! Your are so neutral in your responses - amazingly so - that I alway tried to figure out your background. I think, perhaps, busted, in as much as not many he-men are 5’3? Hope I did not cross a line with this observation?

@ellerbracke My gender? Yep, I am an old woman. I used to be almost 5'4" but have shrunk to 5'2.5". I broke a vertebra in 2004 and was told then that I would probably lose some height but it didn't happen until the last few years.
Also, I am not even close to being a he-man or woman. I work at exercising, something that I started very late in life. My son is amazed at how often I go to the gym since I never exercised when he was younger. He sort of inspires me, and is my cheerleader. My parents both passed away in their 60s and my sister and I both figure that if they had been more active they probably would have lived longer. She read recently that a sedentary life is as bad for your health as smoking.
JK

You and your sister are correct about the effects of a sedentary lifestyle. I read a very apt description of it the other day: Sitting is the new smoking.

@connie1559 It sounds as if you may have read the same article that my sister read. We are very conscious of this due to our parents' early passing. We have outlived them at this point.
JK

I moved-up my apt. with the ortho and went to see him yesterday. X-rays taken and he said my implant has healed perfectly. Bone has grown around new knee and kneecap is perfectly aligned and all angles are perfect. He showed me how my quad muscle has actually atrophied even after all the hard work that I have done. His first thought was to do more pt but I told him I have everything I need to do the same things at home or the gym and that I already had eight weeks pt after surgery last June. So he agreed that I need to go back to basic pt exercises at home using ankle weights etc. Then he told me he is going to order me a device called the e-vive CyMedica ortho garment. It is a electric pulse device worn on leg that is designed by an ortho surgeon and used by athletes and people like me that need to build quad muscle. I was really surprised to see my left quad is measurably smaller than my right side. The doc said it is pretty common post tkr and that this new pulse therapy plus a re-doubling of my own pt will build my quad muscle and will eliminate the pain of climbing stairs. I look forward to getting on with it and I'm very happy to see that the implant is perfect as I was wondering if some thing loosened. I will post after the e-vive arrives and I have used it for awhile. Has anyone else heard of this or tried it?

JK: you seem to have been on the TKR sites for a long time, so you probably heard it all....... question: I was traveling a few days ago, long plane ride, followed by 2 train rides. The second ride, getting off, I suddenly had a really sharp pain in my hip on the TKR side, and I was limping for the rest of the day. My guess is that the extra weight (body weight about 128, backpack and carrying a full size suitcase + heavy winter clothes roughly 40+ lbs., so almost an additional 1/3 of my body weight added), caused my knee to refuse the load and transfer it to the hip? I can still feel it 2 days later, very stiff and uncomfortable in the morning, easing up some after exercise and slow walking. Knee itself is a little grumpy, but not bad............