Month: July 2026

Knee replacement surgery, also known as knee arthroplasty, is replacing a worn, damaged or diseased knee with an artificial joint. The hope is that the knee replacement surgery will relieve pain and improve the function of a damaged knee. There are two types of knee replacement surgery – total knee replacement surgery and partial knee replacement surgery. 

Total Knee Replacement Surgery

Total knee replacement involves removing the surface of the damaged bones and cartilage and replacing them with an artificial implant. There are two types of total knee replacement designs. There is the posterior stabilized design and the cruciate-retaining design. Which design a patient receives depends largely on the PCL (posterior cruciate ligament). The posterior cruciate ligament is the big ligament on the back of the knee that provides support when you bend your knee. 

If the PCL cannot support a knee implant, the surgeon will remove it during the total knee replacement. They will replace the PCL with an implant (cam and post) to stabilize the knee so the patient is able to flex it. This is called the Posterior Stabilized Knee Replacement design.

If the PCL can support a knee implant, the surgeon will leave the PCL where it is and place an implant that has a groove to protect the PCL. This is the Cruciate-Retaining Knee Replacement Design. 

Partial Knee Replacement Surgery

If only one side of the knee is damaged, partial knee replacement surgery may be an option. This is only an option if the knee ligaments are strong and the rest of the cartilage is in good shape. 

Advantages of Knee Replacement Surgery

Relief of Pain

Pain relief is usually the main goal of knee replacement surgery. Most patients have a large reduction in pain after knee replacement surgery and some people eliminate the knee pain altogether. 

Increased Range of Motion

Knee replacement surgery also increases the joint’s range of motion. Sometimes arthritis can severely limit mobility. Knee replacement surgery may restore range of motion of the knee. 

Return to Enjoyable Activities

Knee arthritis can often rob people of many activities they used to enjoy, like hiking and bicycling. Knee replacement surgery may allow return to activities that people like. And often, these activities are beneficial for health in general. They often contribute greatly to cardiovascular health. 

Increase in Independence

Simple walking or climbing stairs or other activities of daily living may be limited due to knee problems. Knee replacement surgery may allow people to regain their ability to live independently.

Disadvantages of Knee Replacement Surgery

Possible Surgery Risks

Knee replacement surgery has a very good success rate but there could be complications as with any surgical procedure. The routine risks to surgery are many, including blood clots, infection and damage to nearby body parts. Serious complications occur in less than 2 percent of knee replacement surgeries. 

Cost

Knee replacement surgery may be very costly. The facility where the surgery is done and the type of implant needed, along with the personal insurance coverage, all factor into how expensive knee replacement surgery may be. Sometimes the out-of-pocket cost might be quite large. 

Time to Heal

It may take up to a year to heal from knee replacement surgery. During this time your activity may be limited. Physical therapy is also part of the process of healing.

It Is Not Permanent

You may ultimately have to have a knee implant replaced. Knee replacement surgery started in the early 1970s. At that time knee implants would only last about 10 years. Now, 80% of knee prosthetics last 25 years. People are living longer, however, so surgeons are cautious about recommending knee replacement surgery in people under 50 years old as they may be very likely to need a revision or replacement of the prosthetic. And, of course, complications of surgeries increase with age. 

Best Age to Have Knee Replacement Surgery 

So, if you get knee replacement surgery too young, you may need to have it redone when you are older, which is a higher risk surgery. But, if you wait too long, you will find yourself at an increased age risk anyway. So, what to do?

Most people have knee replacement surgery between the ages of 60 to 80. Some research finds the early 70s to be the best age to have knee replacement surgery, with low chance of needing another knee surgery and with low risk to the operation itself. This early 70s guideline is not cut and dry though. Each person is different. Risk factors of ongoing illnesses, activity limitations, degree of pain and social situations need to be taken into account. These all need to be discussed with your doctor before deciding at what age or time to have knee replacement surgery. 

Post Op

If you and your surgeon decide to proceed with knee replacement surgery, what happens after that? The average hospitalization after knee replacement surgery is five days. Length of hospitalizations must factor in at home support and health of the patient. It is necessary to have weight bearing on the knee with a walker or crutches because the quadricep muscles will be weak. 

In order to achieve an optimal outcome, multiple weeks of physical therapy are required. Physical therapy increases range of motion, improves circulation, decreases the risk of blood clots and strengthens muscles. Optimized range of motion is usually achieved within two weeks of physical therapy.

It takes about 10 months after surgery for most people to return to normal activity. Although, the operated leg may always be weaker than the nonoperated leg. This is not your original knee and in most cases will not be as strong and pain free as before the knee originally started having issues. Even so, 88% of people are able to return to their preoperative level of activities eventually.

There is a lot involved in knee replacement surgery. Yet, most people have reduced pain, improved mobility and an overall better quality of life after knee replacement surgery. If you are having knee pain, it is definitely worth discussing options with your doctor. 

For a personal story, read Diary of a Total Knee Replacement.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Have you had knee replacement surgery or are you considering having knee replacement surgery? If you have had knee replacement surgery, how has that experience been for you? Tell us what have been the pros and cons of your knee replacement surgery?

I have a question for you.

How many poems have you written that no one has ever read?

How many stories, letters, journal entries, or treasured memories are tucked away in a drawer or saved on your computer? Perhaps you’ve written about your childhood, your parents, your husband or wife, your children, or one unforgettable moment that helped shape your life.

Now ask yourself another question.

What If Those Words Could Become Something People Would Stop and Listen to?

One of the things I’ve discovered over the years is that music has a remarkable way of carrying words into people’s hearts. Ask someone to read a three-page poem, and they may tell you they’ll get to it later. Ask them to listen to a three-minute song, and they’re much more likely to press the play button.

That doesn’t make poetry any less valuable. It simply means music reaches people in a different way.

I’ve always believed that our words deserve to live beyond the page.

Every poem tells a story. Every story captures a memory. Every letter preserves a moment in time. When those words are paired with music, something wonderful happens. They take on a new life. You don’t just read the emotion – you hear it.

I’ve seen people become emotional the first time they hear their own words come back to them as a song. A poem written years ago suddenly has a melody. A tribute to a husband or wife becomes something the entire family can listen to. A memory of a parent becomes a gift that children and grandchildren can treasure long after we’re gone.

To me, that’s what preserving a legacy is all about.

It’s one thing to leave behind photographs. It’s another to leave behind your own thoughts, your own stories, and your own voice in a form that people will want to play again and again.

My Own Story May Surprise You

I’m 83 years old today, but I didn’t begin sharing my own music with the world until I was 79.

It wasn’t because I lacked confidence in my songs. In fact, I had been writing music for decades. Years earlier, I spent seven years in Los Angeles trying to interest music publishers and record executives in my work. Like many songwriters, I discovered that getting through the industry’s gatekeepers could be frustrating and discouraging. After enough closed doors, I simply walked away – not from writing songs, but from trying to convince executives that my work was worth hearing.

Then something remarkable happened.

Technology changed everything.

Streaming platforms made it possible for artists to share their music directly with listeners. Suddenly, there were no executives deciding whether my songs deserved an audience. The audience itself could decide.

So, at 79 years old, I finally began releasing the songs I had kept to myself for so many years.

The amazing part is that the songs hadn’t changed.

The lyrics hadn’t changed.

My approach to songwriting hadn’t changed.

The only thing that changed was how people were able to discover them.

Today, those songs are receiving encouraging reviews, attracting followers, and being streamed by listeners around the world. It’s been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, not because of numbers, but because complete strangers are connecting with something that lived quietly inside me for decades.

That Experience Taught Me an Important Lesson

Sometimes it isn’t our creativity that’s being rejected. Sometimes it’s simply the timing, the circumstances, or the path we chose to share it.

That’s one of the reasons I created From Heart to Harmony.

The project is dedicated to helping people transform their original poems, personal stories, family memories, and heartfelt writings into professionally produced songs. You don’t have to be a songwriter. You don’t have to play an instrument. You simply have to have something meaningful to say.

If you choose to trust me with your words, I promise to treat them with the greatest love, respect, and care that words on paper can receive. I’ll work with you to turn your memories into the best song possible, refining it until you’re genuinely happy with the result.

Because these aren’t just lyrics.

They’re your life.

Technology Has Opened Doors That Simply Didn’t Exist A Few Years Ago

Today, ordinary people have the opportunity to hear their own words performed with beautiful music. A favorite poem can become a song. A letter to a loved one can become a lasting tribute. A life story can become something future generations will listen to long after we’re gone.

If you’ve spent years writing poems, stories, journals, or memories that have remained hidden away, perhaps it’s time to let them breathe.

After all, the greatest stories are often the ones that almost never get told.

Don’t leave your memories sitting in a drawer.

Let them be heard.

If you’d like to learn more about From Heart to Harmony, or if you have a poem, story, or memory you’d like to transform into a song, I’d love to hear from you. Reach me at fromhearttoharmony@gmail.com.

Click here to listen to examples on YouTube.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How many poems have you written that no one has ever read? Do you write down special memories or stories? Would they look good in music format? What do you think about personal tributes?

After 21 years, I left my first marriage.

There was no scandal, no single terrible night I could point to. Our values and our goals for a life had simply quietly stopped aligning. One of us was in constant chase of money. The other kept looking toward home and family and finding the other chair empty. Nobody had to be a villain for it to be over. The lives we wanted had been pointing in different directions for a long time, until one day I stopped pretending otherwise.

Years later, I became estranged from one of my brothers, and with him, from his children and their children. Again, there was no explosion. There was the slow accumulation of never feeling welcome, never feeling supported, of bringing something painful to people who were supposed to be my safe place and finding they were not. Being related to someone, I learned, is not the same as being held by them.

Here is the part nobody warned me about. Both times I stepped back, the first thing I felt was not relief. It was guilt. The kind that sits in your chest and tells you that whatever happened, you are the one who broke something.

Where That Guilt Comes From

That guilt did not come from nowhere. It was installed, carefully, over a lifetime, by three words almost all of us were handed as girls: family is everything.

Most of my life I never turned those words over to look at the underside. And I want to be fair, because there is a great deal those words get right. We are built for family. For nearly all of human history, the family was the thing that fed you, protected you, and gave you a place in the world. The pull we feel toward our relatives is not a trick. It is real and it is old, and it deserves respect.

The research agrees, even about the hard part. A Cornell sociologist named Karl Pillemer conducted the first large national survey of family estrangement, and he found that most people who become estranged from a relative describe the distance as painful, not freeing. I can tell you from my own life that this is true. Letting go of family is rarely a victory. It is usually a loss, even when it is the right loss.

So when someone says family matters, they are not wrong. The trouble begins when “matters” hardens into “is everything,” and “everything” quietly comes to mean “no matter what.”

The Half That Does the Harm

Because “family is everything” almost never travels alone. It comes with a hidden rule attached, one most of us absorbed without noticing. The rule says the obligation runs in one direction and never expires. You owe your family. They do not have to earn it. And if the relationship turns painful, the work of holding it together still somehow falls to you.

I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to overstate. A slogan did not, by itself, keep me where I was for as long as it did. People stay for many reasons woven together: they depend on someone financially, they fear what leaving would cost, they have been quietly isolated from anyone who might say “this is not right.” And underneath it all, so many of us simply blame ourselves, convinced the problem is our own failure to try hard enough.

Notice that “family is everything” is not the cause of any of that. It sits on top of it. It takes every reason a woman already cannot leave and adds one more weight: not only are you stuck, the slogan whispers, but wanting out makes you the one who failed the family.

That is the real harm. The slogan does not build the cage. It convinces the woman inside that she deserves to be there.

What I Believe Now

I did not come out the other side believing the opposite. “Family owes you nothing” is just as false as “you owe family everything.” I have watched people get just as stuck in bitterness as I once was in guilt.

What I believe now sits in between, and it has held up far better than either extreme: loyalty is earned, and it can be withdrawn.

Being someone’s wife, daughter, sister, or mother does not obligate you to absorb harm. The bond is meant to protect you, not to bind you to your own suffering. A relationship that asks you to give up your dignity to keep it intact is not asking for loyalty. It is asking for sacrifice, and calling it loyalty so you will not notice the difference.

This is why one number from Pillemer’s research has stayed with me. Twenty-seven percent of American adults are estranged from a relative right now. That is roughly 67 million people, and he believes even that is an undercount, because so many will not admit it. That figure does not prove families are bad. It proves that stepping back is far more common than the slogan admits, and that the women who do it are not rare, not broken, and not alone. The shame the slogan manufactures runs on a lie, the belief that you are the only one who could not make it work. Sixty-seven million people say otherwise. I am one of them.

Knowing this does not change what you feel, though. That is the part the slogan counts on. The guilt does not live in your reasoning, where an argument could reach it. It lives in your body, and you have to work through it there. The practice I use has three steps.

Feel

Let the guilt or dread exist without rushing to obey it or argue with it, and notice where it sits in your body.

Pause

Put space between the feeling and your response, and in that space ask the question the slogan forbids, is this loyalty earned?

Act

Then move from your answer, not from the guilt, whether that is a conversation, a boundary, or distance.

Feel, pause, act, rather than think, override, comply. I’ve written about each step in much more depth in a companion piece here if you want to go further.

The Gift of These Years

If there is one mercy in reaching this stage of life, it is this. We have lived long enough to know the difference between a bond that holds us up and one that only holds us down. We no longer have to spend our remaining years carrying something that was never ours to carry.

Letting go did not make me less loving. It made me honest. And the family I have chosen and kept, the people who actually show up, mean more to me now than the word “family” ever did when it was only a rule.

If you read this and recognized your own life, please hold two things at once. Seeing a relationship clearly is not disloyalty, and naming what hurt is not the same as causing it. And you do not have to sort any of this out alone.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What does family mean to you? How has this affected your family life? Have you considered estrangement from a family member? What did you base your decision on?

I didn’t start hiking long distances until I was well into my 60s. During my life, I had backpacked and hiked for several days at a time. Aside from a 3-week trek to Mount Everest in my 20-ties, I never spent weeks on the trail. During a tough time in my marriage in my late 50-ties, I sought the high mountains of the Himalayas to get away from the confusion at home. Far horizons, empty landscapes, and a challenge that would test my limits and reveal my true capabilities were what I wanted. 

I took a 12-day trip with a guide and donkey man in a roadless area of Ladakh, India, above 13,000 feet altitude. A place to get lost, a place to meet your maker, as they say. That trip opened up the notion that long hikes are more than exercise, more than meeting a physical challenge. That’s where I discovered what walking really does for me.

Walking Is Basic Survival

Long-distance walking and hiking is a daily rhythm, a simplified life centered on basic survival. It connects with the nomadic part of our DNA. Humans walked to find food, grazing grounds, and shelter. Walking is basic survival. High in the Himalayas, I discovered my vitality, my connection with the world around me, my ability to extend myself both physically and mentally. At those heights, I found the essence of living. I write about this trek in my memoir, Fly Free: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Walking the Path.

The realization that I was part of a bigger world, and that my body and mind breathe with the heartbeat of the universe, drove me to return to the long trail again and again. On the long trail, I discovered who I was and am. Since I was in my mid-60s when I started hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, I didn’t have the stamina of the younger through-hikers.

One Step at a Time

I didn’t aim at achieving an athletic feat. I was wise enough to hike the trail in sections. I found out when I had been out on the trail long enough and needed to integrate what I had experienced and go home. Each time I went out for a couple of weeks, or a month, I learned something about myself and my place in the world. The trail taught me that becoming doesn’t stop as you age, not at 60 or 70. Becoming deepens.

With each slow step, with each climb up a pass, each descent, I learned what aging is. It is not a loss of ability; it is a managing of abilities. It is a deepening of understanding, a slowing down so I can savor and delight in what the world has to offer me. I found that the body is still capable. And when I completed the Pacific Crest Trail at age 75, I had found a deep vitality and a comfort with my body that has served me since as health and aging challenges present themselves.

There Is Grace, Growth and Change

I wrote another book Body and Grace, a Woman’s Hike to Wholeness on the Pacific Crest Trail, in which I chronicle my journey on the long trail; share the things I learned and the challenges I overcame. Not only did I learn that the body is still capable at 65 and 75, I found something more transformational: I learned that there is such a thing as Grace, a benevolent force that protects me and guides me as I journey through life. I trust things will work out. It’s the biggest gift the trail gave me.

After I finished hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, I didn’t hang up the pack. I bought a new one, a lighter one, and started hiking sections of the Continental Divide Trail; I hiked pilgrimages in Europe. I adjusted my gear, found lighter models, so when I go walk for a week now and then, my load is lighter. The walks are a refresher for my spirit, because my spirit is still growing. This season of life – I am in my 80th year now – is still very much alive. The trail taught me that there is no end to growing and changing.

Take a Long Walk

If you are a woman 60 and beyond, longing to feel vitality and looking for a new direction, discover what walking can really do for you; take a long walk. Instead of shrinking in a chair looking for entertainment, use your body to move you to new horizons. Explore new neighborhoods, new countries if you can afford it, and discover yourself in a new way. Walk! There is wisdom in your miles.

Let’s Reflect:

What’s the longest walk you’ve taken? What did you learn about yourself in those hours/days?

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