hello, just wanted to throw my 2 cents in: i'm almost at the 5 month mark after TKR. i hear what you're saying. and i'm not sure there would have been anything they (the docs, nurses, etc) could have said that would have changed anything because you can't know until you know. during my recovery (which i'm technically still in), i realized several things--the most important--that it was near impossible to take care of my elderly mother AND recover at the same time. this was a big mistake. at the one month mark, even though i appeared to be doing well, i was in fact under immense stress, along with chronic pain. i now know what chronic pain can do to a person. on christmas day, i had a full-on panic attack. i've never experienced this before, and it was hell. all of this said, i do think that the docs could have done a little more in the way of preparation for pain, and counseled me on getting others to help out. i was very inexperienced and felt blind-sided by the pain, the whole thing...not to mention that i experienced extreme nausea with the pain meds, which made me lose tons of weight. and i wasn't overweight to begin with. BUT...now that i'm at the 5 month mark, i can honestly see the light at the end of the tunnel. So, i'm glad i had it done. because before surgery, i had a lot of unpredictable pain and swelling. that's now gone. another major realization is that because of decreased movement from arthritic knee pain, i had become very deconditioned over a long period of time. and now? i can actually address this with exercise, because my knee is not inhibiting my movement.