18 ◾ Beyond the Days of the Giants
that someday another surgical joint intervention of some kind might be
necessary.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago around the winter holidays. My
surgically altered knee began to hurt something terrible, and I was hobbling
along just barely able to get to the office and uncomfortably do my job. The
meeting with my family physician went as you might expect it. She reminded
me that carrying the extra twenty-five pounds I’d gained since quitting
smoking probably wasn’t helping things. But she referred me to a surgeon in
their clinical system to evaluate me for a possible knee replacement.
My meeting with the surgeon indicated that my knee was indeed in bad
shape. But, he offered, the relative amount of pain ...