Minimally Invasive, my foot. (Actually, my knee.)

If you’ve been wondering, where’s Phil? I’m in the middle of a seldom-available hiatus from the working world. My wife and I had long ago scheduled two weeks in Europe. Then my friendly neighborhood orthopod said, “It’s time to replace those aching knees with titanium.”

(That’s right, I’ve joined the growing throng of bionics. I’m also close personal friends with a variety of airport security people. All those odd positions they want you take? I’ve got them down pat. And, yes, there is some patting involved.)

So I got one new knee in March and the other was scheduled for six months later, which ran us right up against our already-ticketed two weeks in Europe. When I asked the folks at work how they’d prefer I handle that, they said it was easier to deal with one longer absence than two shorter ones. Be gone.

So, we've just done a week in Malta — an ancient and fascinating island seldom visited by Americans, and a week in overwhelming, extraordinary and overrun-by-tourists Florence, Italy. (Imagine what it’s like to live in a town of about 350,000 that’s visited by 11 million tourists every year.)

That means we went from a place where we were the only Americans in sight to a week where we couldn’t get away from them, no matter how badly we wanted to. (The wild-eyed woman in the lovely plaza-side restaurant in Florence, waving both of her arms over her head and shouting, "Hey, waiter, over here! over here!" made everyone want to hide, no matter what language they were speaking.)

Then the day after we got back, I, as my dad used to say, “went under the knife.” I’m doing great, but then everything looks pretty good when you’re still on Percocet.

There’s still a bit over a week before I’m due back at work, and I’m starting to sit down and sift through what has been an incredibly experience-rich sort-of-sabbatical. As you might guess, many of the following entries will probably reflect my five weeks away from daily schedules. (You may now take a moment to envy me.)

One generalization about all of the above — it’s a theme my wife often plays back to me, and one of the reasons I value her so much: we are incredibly privileged.

In this case, first, to have the time and money to bop off to Europe. And, second, to have the sort of healthcare coverage that lets me exchange aching, old parts for shiny new ones. 

Talk about an oxymoron, the surgeries I just had are officially called Minimally Invasive Total Knee Replacement. That sounds as if my doctor sawed of my legs, inserted new parts and put me back together again, and there was nothing to it. That’s a wow.