I’ve avoided writing about something for a while now and it’s time I begin to chronicle this new adventure (?) Last year I began to have problems with my right knee. I went to my doctor and she prescribed anti-inflammatories and icing. For a while it seemed to improve but took a nosedive earlier this year. We are very new to the Italian health care system so are groping our way along with many false starts.

We went back to our doctor and I asked for an appointment with an orthopedic doctor. Dotoressa Mommi wrote a prescription for an appointment. And said it was urgent enough to get done in 30 days. The only available doctor was in Deruta, about 30 minutes south of us. We visited him and he was frustrated that we had no X-rays or an MRI. All he could do is proscribe something which turned out to be pretty useless. We decided to go and get an MRI on our own and pay for it. If I didn’t want to pay I could have gone and asked our doctor to prescribe one and waited (again). So we went to a diagnostic center and I paid 126€ for an MRI. Not bad.

Armed with this we could make an appointment privately with a doctor of our choice. The only one we knew was far south in Spoleto. We visited him and he read the MRI. He said I need a total knee replacement. Sigh. We paid 150€ to consult with him.

Back we went to our doctor. In hindsight we could have asked this doctor we went to privately and he could have put us into the system and done the surgery. But we didn’t understand this at the time. Dot. Mommi explained it to us. And she offered to make an appointment for us with a good orthopedic guy in Umbertide. I prefer to not have to go too far for the procedure mainly because I would like it to be close for Luther to visit.

We visited the orthopedic guy yesterday. He was nice enough and even spoke a little English. But mostly it was in Italian. He too recommended knee replacement. Second opinions are good. So he gave us a form to fill in and email to the powers that be to schedule surgery. As always, everything in Italy shuts down in August. In this case last week in July to first week in September for non-emergency surgery. So we are looking at October-November for operation. Sigh. It is a long wait.

I guess my biggest worry is communication while in hospital and rehab. But on the bright side (?) I’ll learn more Italian. We are told it’s 5-7 days in hospital and then three weeks in in-patient rehab. Seems excessive by American standards…but in America it is all about the bottom line so they kick you out fast! For me, I’m thinking by the time I’m done I’ll be able to do the stairs here. Operation will be in the very nice hospital in Perugia, rehab here in Umbertide.

Since this is what I’m stuck with I am going ahead with plans that I was kind of worried about. We have a cruise on the Crostian coast in August and have a friend housesitting. I didn’t want to cancel either. I may be stuck in my stateroom but… Then we have friends in late September and another in mid October. This will mean I can just do what I can do and I and my guests will have to deal with it.

For my everyday life I stay mostly in the apartment. I descend and ascend the three flights of stairs maybe once a day. So far, so good. Hurts but manageable. The good news is knee replacements have generally good results and are not too hard to recover from. Crossing fingers it will be so for me and I will be good as new. This will be great! 🙂