[images style=”4″ image=”http://totalknee.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/49-copy.png” width=”202″ caption=”Anyone for a Post-Mortem on a Knee Replacement Recovery?” align=”center” top_margin=”10″ alt_text=”post-mortem knee replacement recovery” full_width=”Y”]

First of all, I am a big advocate of using the internet to enhance your knowledge of almost anything. I do however realize that all shared wisdom is not equal. There are two extremes when it comes to looking for information online pertaining to knee replacement recovery.

You will either encounter marketing  speak (knee replacements are big money, folks) or low level; “I was a patient once and my experience was ….”.  Sadly, there is very little in between. Most people need a little help recognizing the dangers of both types of information.

One Man’s Journey

During my internet travels, I recently came upon a man who shared extensively about his journey recovering from a total knee replacement on a Squdioo page. Artyfax as he calls himself does an excellent job of compiling references and detailing his almost 20 month journey recovering from a knee replacement.

[images style=”4″ image=”http://totalknee.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Artyfax.png” width=”362″ align=”center” top_margin=”0″ alt_text=”singing about a knee replacement recovery” full_width=”Y”]

He has plenty of links to videos and pictures., plus a personal dairy of sorts about his struggles and achievements. The Original Squidoo page has been removed

If you want to read about my diagnosis of his situation where I inject my thoughts and comments overlaid directly on his story, you can read that here.

While I highly commend Artyfax for his perseverance and honesty in sharing, I believe his story is incredibly illustrative of the kind of lengthy frustration and suffering you can experience if you don’t have proper rehab instruction. (And I am not talking about the typical medical model either) 

Remember also that Artyfax is journaling from the UK where they have socialized medicine. Go on any blog or forum and you will find folks laboring with gobs of misinformation about how to recover. Sorry my UK friends.

It’s the kind of thing that made me stop practicing physical therapy and start writing. I hate to see people go through this kind of ordeal when it is so avoidable!!

And by the way don’t think that just because his story is about a UK recovery that it doesn’t happen in the United States as well.

He was given exercises to be completed just like everyone else. So what happened?

Find out  here



Michelle, PT
Michelle, PT

Michelle Stiles called "the no nonsense" therapist, by her patients, created a company called Cowboy Up Recovery after recognizing the bankruptcy of the present medical model. Too many people regard conventional medical wisdom as gospel, ignoring the subversive influences of Big Pharma and Big Medicine. She believes, Americans in general are being trained from an early age to defer to experts in numerous areas of life and losing the impulses for self-responsibility and self-reliance in the process. Over-diagnosis and over-medicating has become endemic. While thankful for the best miracles of modern medicine, she encourages people of all persuasions to listen to their bodies and seek out answers to maintain not just an absence of disease but optimal health. Her advice is: Cowboy Up, no one cares more about your health than you do.