June ended with me preparing for knee replacement surgery and admitting that I didn’t know exactly what July would look like. Well, let me tell you. On June 30th, 2026, I had my total right knee replacement. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I knew there would be pain. I knew recovery would require patience. Knowing something intellectually and actually experiencing it are two entirely different things. Oh. My. Gosh. It hurt. I spent two days in the hospital after surgery, which turned out to be a very good decision. My first attempt to get up and walk gave everyone a little preview of what they were dealing with. Spoiler alert: I am a fainter. Two technicians helped me get up for my first walk to the bathroom. I made it there and then promptly fainted on them. Yes. I know. TMI. But this is my life.
Thankfully, they got me safely back to bed, and between the fainting and my very low blood pressure, it became pretty clear that sending me home immediately wasn’t going to be the best idea. So, I stayed. And honestly, I was grateful; eventually, it was time to go home, and I had exactly one goal in mind. I wanted to make it upstairs to my bedroom. I did not want to spend my recovery sleeping on the couch downstairs. I wanted my bed. My room. My space. Now, considering how difficult it was just getting me into the car, Fred was understandably a little apprehensive about this plan, but I was determined. One step at a time, I made it upstairs; I made it to our bedroom. I got into my bed. And I slept. That may not sound like a major accomplishment, but after knee replacement surgery, getting yourself to the second floor of your house feels remarkably close to summiting Mount Everest.
Then came the actual recovery. Because I am allergic to acetaminophen, I don’t have the usual over-the-counter pain medication option available to me. My pain management included prescribed oxycodone and tramadol, although the tramadol didn’t seem to do much for me. Those first couple of weeks were about very little movement, and that was difficult for me in ways beyond the physical pain.
I am accustomed to moving, doing, going, and checking my step count, so seeing such tiny numbers was almost unbelievable compared with what I was used to. My mind thought I should be able to do more, while my knee quickly reminded me we were operating under an entirely new set of rules. There were shooting pains as everything in my knee seemed to be coming back to life. Good gosh, nobody explained those well. There were moments when the pain seemed to arrive from nowhere and announce, HELLO! Remember me? Yes, knee. I remember you. And let me offer one completely unsolicited piece of advice to anyone facing a knee replacement: Get the ice machine.
That ice machine was amazing. I don’t know who invented it, but during July, that person ranked very high on my list of favorite human beings. But the real MVP of July was Fred. I don’t think I could count how many times that man went up and down those stairs. He brought me every meal. He made sure I had what I needed. He took care of me, he watched over me, and for quite a while, he wouldn’t even allow me to go downstairs.
Now, by the end of July, I was starting to feel a little better. Apparently, feeling a little better also meant I was starting to get ideas. I had ordered some packages, and they arrived downstairs. I wanted to see them badly. Fred wasn’t home, so I called my mother, who lives next door, and asked her to come over. She went downstairs, went through the packages, and brought me the one I wanted. Perfectly reasonable, at least I thought so. When Fred came home and realized I had the package, he was HOT. His immediate conclusion was that I had gone downstairs to get it. He basically wanted to know, “Oh, you’re going downstairs for packages now?” Why don’t you cook a meal? I waited for him to finish, then I said, “Sir, my mother brought that package upstairs to me. I did not go downstairs.” The look on his face was priceless. Then came his response: “You bear watching. It is something you would have done.” I couldn’t even argue with him. He’s not wrong, and somewhere inside that ridiculous little exchange was one of the greatest gifts July gave me: being cared for, really cared for. There is vulnerability in allowing someone else to do for you what you are accustomed to doing for yourself.
I am a doer. I solve things. I organize things. I take care of people. I lead organizations, manage projects, travel, speak, write, host a podcast, plan events, and somehow convince myself that one more thing can fit on the calendar. July didn’t care about any of that; my body needed to heal, period. For the first couple of weeks, my world shrank: my bedroom, my walker, medication, meals, ice, sleep, a few more steps than yesterday, and the people who loved me enough to help. Eventually, the worst of the pain began to subside. After my first follow-up appointment with my physician, I began physical therapy later in July, which brought a new challenge. Once you start feeling a little better, you want recovery to hurry up. But knees and bodies in general do not operate according to our preferred timelines.
Healing has its own schedule, which was probably July’s lesson for me. In June, I wrote that this season might not have been asking me to do more. Maybe it was asking me to experience more of the life I had worked so hard to build; July took that lesson one step further. What if sometimes the work is allowing yourself to be still? What if progress is not measured by how many things you accomplished today? What if progress is getting out of bed? Taking ten more steps, doing the exercises even though they hurt, letting someone bring your dinner upstairs, sleeping when your body says sleep, accepting help without apologizing for needing it, and celebrating movement that would have seemed insignificant a month earlier.
I spend much of my life talking about rebuilding after loss. We want rebuilding to look dramatic. We want the breakthrough, the big moment, the visible transformation. But sometimes rebuilding is incredibly ordinary. Sometimes it is one painful step, then another, then another. And sometimes it is realizing you don’t have to race back to the person you were before.
Your job is to care for the person you are right now. July wasn’t glamorous; there weren’t big stages or celebrations. I didn’t have an impressive step count. I spent most of the month trying to manage pain, regain movement, and convince my husband that I could be trusted when left unattended. The jury may still be out on that last one, but I made progress. By the end of the month, I wasn’t where I wanted to be yet; I was simply farther than where I started, and for July, that was enough.
If you are in a season where life has slowed you down, whether because of illness, surgery, grief, exhaustion, caregiving, or circumstances you never planned, maybe you don’t need to measure yourself against what you used to be able to do. Maybe today’s smaller victory deserves to count; mine did, one step at a time, and apparently, under supervision.
— Dr. Tina Fornwald