The Games We Play to Get Dressed After Knee Replacement
Yesterday felt like a small milestone.
I went to my first physiotherapy intake appointment and booked out the next four weeks of sessions. I also removed my surgical bandage and replaced it with a fresh one, knowing my staples are coming out in just a few days.
Which meant yesterday involved all the greatest hits of early recovery: a proper shower, getting dressed, and leaving the condo.
Somewhere between wrapping my leg in plastic so I could shower and standing in my bedroom flicking my underwear through the air like a lasso, I started laughing. Not because anything hurt — but because I suddenly realized how many strange little games we invent just to get through the basics after knee replacement surgery.
And that’s when it occurred to me: no one really talks about these parts.
Cowboy Lasso, Level Two: A Knee Replacement Survival Skill
Before knee replacement surgery, I spent a lot of time thinking about logistics.
How would I carry things?
How would I make coffee?
How would I get dressed?
Dressing myself, in particular, felt like a big unknown. I had visions of long-handled grabbers, awkward contortions, and possibly being trapped in my bedroom wearing one sock and a look of defeat.
During my first hospital stay last August, the physiotherapist walked in and casually announced that the first thing we were going to do was get dressed. No pressure.
I pulled out my pants and suddenly realized I hadn’t actually worked out how this was supposed to happen.
It turns out flexibility helps.
I’m lucky that my hips still cooperate, so I bent forward, grabbed my pants, swung them around, and managed to loop the leg hole over my operated foot. Once that leg was in, the rest was… surprisingly easy.
That became my method. All through August. And again now, after my second knee replacement.
At home, it’s evolved into what I jokingly call “Cowboy Lasso, Level Two.”
This involves flicking my underwear through the air and attempting to catch my foot by the leg hole — without losing balance, dignity, or control of the fabric. When it works, it feels like a small personal victory. When it doesn’t, we regroup and try again.
The Shower Engineering Phase
Showering deserves its own category.
My solution involves a plastic produce bag — the kind you grab for apples at the grocery store — with the bottom cut out. I slide it over my leg and seal both ends to my skin with packing tape like I’m preparing something for shipment rather than bathing.
It’s not elegant.
It’s not reusable.
And it definitely wasn’t mentioned in the hospital discharge paperwork.
But it works.
And that seems to be the theme of recovery: you stop worrying about whether something looks normal and start caring deeply about whether it gets the job done.
Accidental Lobby Fashion
After showering and getting dressed, I decided to do the responsible thing and go down to the lobby and wait for my ride to my appointment
I grabbed my walker and headed out.
When I entered the lobby, there were three people standing there. They stopped talking and just… stared.
For a brief, panicked moment I thought, What have I done? Am I not wearing pants?
Then I looked down.
I was wearing track pants — except I had cut the entire right leg off them. The left leg was intact. The right leg ended somewhere around mid-thigh. I’d done it deliberately so the fabric wouldn’t rub against my staples and bandage, and it made perfect sense at home.
In the lobby? Less so.
So there I stood with my walker, one full pant leg, one 1/4 pant leg, and the quiet confidence of someone who has completely stopped caring what “normal” looks like.
I carried on as if this were a perfectly reasonable fashion choice.
We don’t just recover from knee replacement surgery.
We improvise.
We invent.
We adapt.
And sometimes, we laugh at ourselves halfway through doing something ordinary and realize that this — strangely enough — is progress too.