Everyone at Heiden Orthopedics in Sandy, Utah, knows my name. They smile when I walk in and are so pleased with the progress on knee replacement #1 that they’re just dying to know if I’m ready for bone sawing day number two, just six days away.

Bring it, I say.

Of course, it’s all an act.

Four weeks after knee replacement surgery number one and badly needing some positivity to go with the still persistent pain, I venture into the garage, swipe the cobwebs off my mountain bike, and heft it onto the tailgate of my truck.

It’s three weeks after my first knee replacement surgery—the days are already ticking down toward my second—and by most measures, I’m doing fine. But I’m completely failing in one area: pain management.

Two weeks since surgery, and it’s time to get going with physical therapy. As my prescription does not specify the facility, I’m on my own to choose. Yet another important choice that I’m ill-informed to make. What I do know is that I do not want to be treated like an old guy who hopes to one day get back to the shuffleboard court (in other words, someone my age). I want to be pushed, I want to be optimized, to be treated like an athlete.

Thirteen days after surgery, I walk into Heiden Orthopedics in Sandy, Utah, for my first look at my new knee.

Like any good American faced with a difficult challenge, I’ll try to buy my way out of anything I can. Here are the things that worked for me.

You expect the first couple of days after knee replacement surgery to be a nightmare of pain and suffering, sleepless nights, endless days. And they were. But nothing compared to what’s coming on Day 3.

By the end of this day, my left knee—admittedly cranky and unreliable, but still it’s mine and has been with me for 63 years—will be gone. In its place will be a football-sized, immobile goiter with an eight-inch, blood-encrusted zipper in its place. A fun vision to contemplate.

With an Olympian-turned-surgeon in my corner, I felt like I was finally rolling down the road to new knees, but first I’d have to have some warm-up suffering to get me ready for the real deal.

I’d walked away from a doctor who would’ve done the surgery because, frankly, I didn’t think he gave a shit, and then one of the leading orthopedic hospitals in the West sent me packing because I was a difficult case. Frustration trending toward depression, I didn’t see the gold medal solution right in front of me.

You don’t just stroll in off the street and have joint replacement surgery. You’ve got to prove that you can pay and are healthy enough not to die on the table.

Not all surgeons operate equally, and one of the key predictors of success is who you choose to do yours.

Now that I know I’m committed to knee replacement surgery, I need to understand what the procedure actually entails, how it works, and who it benefits.

Even though we live in an era of second chances, I don’t think most people get into late middle life, and in response to the pain of wearing out body parts, turn immediately to, Okay, it’s time, let’s just replace the suckers.

I have close friends and family members who would prefer that I chill and take up shuffleboard. Maybe just be normal for once? But if you hang out with the people I’ve spent my life around, replacing broken-down body parts is not a novel concept at all. It’s more of a when question than an if.

In the summer of 2025, I had double knee replacement surgery because it’s what geezahs do, and of course, to give me something to talk about on the early morning tram at Snowbird. Everyone I’d asked about it said it would be a breeze. They were wrong. It was a shitstorm.