Last October, I had a partial knee replacement and all was fine until April. After strimming the garden, including an area that slopes downhill, it started to hurt again.
I put this down to stress on the joint from standing on a slope and strimming, but when it hadn't got any better after a couple of months I got a phone appointment with the GP who referred me for an x-ray.
The x-ray showed that a "spacer" that had been put in had "slipped" and the GP has referred me back to the consultant who did the surgery last year. I'm assuming that this will mean another operation to put everything back where it should be.
I have two questions that I hope someone may be able to answer:
Firstly, will this surgery be as disabling as the initial surgery and require the same period of recovery; and secondly, will I be seen more promptly than if it was a wholly new referral rather than a fix to very recent surgery that has failed? I was discharged by the consultant in mid-January.
I waited 3 years for the first operation (although one year of that was probably due to Covid), and the thought of having to wait another 2 or 3 to get it sorted is making me very despondent. And I was reluctant to have it done really, I was hoping they'd be able to do an arthroscopy (done very successfully on my shoulder a few years ago), but the consultant persuaded me, saying that most people who have knee arthroscopies for arthritis come back for a replacement in a couple of years anyway.