My granddaughter pats the floor and says "Grandma, sit." And I have to make an excuse.
Carol R.
Verified contributor · 67 · grandmother of four
My granddaughter pats the floor next to her and says "Grandma, sit." And I have to make an excuse.
Not because I can't get down there. Because I can't get back up. Not without a scene. And I won't let her watch me claw my way off the floor like some old woman.
So I say, "You bring your toys up here to Grandma's chair, sweetheart." And she does. But something in me breaks a little every time.
Because I know what I'm really doing. I'm backing away from her.
I'm 67. I've got 4 grandbabies and the littlest is 5 and she's a pistol, that one. I was always the grandma on the floor. The one in the middle of it. Now I watch from the chair.
It's my knees. Osteoarthritis, the doctor calls it. It's been building for years.
It's worst in the mornings. I sit on the edge of the bed and I have to talk my legs into working before I trust them to hold me. My husband Ron will call from the kitchen, "You alright, hon?" and I always say "I'm fine" — even when I'm holding the dresser just to get across the room.
That's the part that eats at me. Ron.
He's 70. He's got his own aches. But he does the groceries now, the heavy things, because I can't manage the up and down to the car anymore. He never complains. Not once. But I see it.
I married a man to walk beside. Not a man who has to keep one eye on me on the stairs.
And here's what nobody warns you about knee arthritis. It isn't the big dramatic pain. It's the little things. The ones that slip away so slowly you don't notice until they're gone.
Hosting Sunday dinner without having to sit down 3 times between the stove and the table. Gone.
Walking beside my husband instead of him waiting for me to catch up. Gone.
Getting down on the floor with my grandbabies and back up like it's nothing. Gone.
And then there's Michelle. My daughter. She's started, too.
"Mom, are you okay on those stairs?" "Mom, should you be up on that step stool?" "Mom, maybe you and Dad should think about—" and she never finishes it.
But I know what comes after "maybe you should think about." A smaller place. One floor. No stairs. Giving up the house.
And I am nowhere near ready for that. This is our home. Ron and I built our whole life here.
So when my knee buckles a little on the stairs, my first thought isn't even the pain. It's — did anyone see that. Because every time I stumble, I feel like I'm handing them a reason.
I've tried things. Lord, I've tried.
The creams that leave the whole bathroom smelling like menthol for an hour. I've got half a drawer of them.
The pills. I don't like all those pills. My own mother rattled like a bottle at the end and I swore I never would.
A knee brace. It held everything snug, felt supportive. But it never touched the stiffness. It just wrapped the outside while the inside stayed locked up.
I did the exercises they sent me home with — every morning, until even Ron knew the routine by heart. I kept moving like they told me to. It helped some. But not enough.
I even tried the injections. Hundreds of dollars a shot — and I expected a lot more relief than I got. Then they told me to just come back and do it again when the pain returned. Paying that, over and over, for something that barely helped. I couldn't see it.
A heating pad came the closest. The warmth genuinely felt good. But it sat on one flat spot, never wrapped around the whole knee, and slid out of place the second I moved. I was forever holding it there, adjusting it, trying to keep it where it needed to be.
Everything helped a little. Nothing helped enough.
And I was still arranging my whole day around these knees.
The doctor said the word "replacement." And all I could picture was months of recovery, Ron having to do everything, and not knowing exactly how I'd come out the other side. No. Not unless I've got no other choice.
So one night, when I couldn't sleep for the ache, I stopped waiting for someone to fix this for me and started looking into it myself.
And I kept coming back to the heat. Of everything I'd tried, the warmth was the one thing that genuinely helped. It just never stayed where I needed it.
So that's what I went looking for. Not more pills. Not a bigger brace. That same warmth that actually helped — but wrapped around the whole knee, and held there long enough to matter. Something made for exactly this, a stiff, arthritic knee, that I could use myself, right here at home.
That's when I found the one I use now.
I didn't expect much, I'll be honest. I'd been let down too many times. But it said I could send it back for a refund if it didn't help, so I thought, well — what have I got to lose. And it was a fraction of what one of those shots cost.
Right away it was different. It wrapped around the whole knee and stayed put — nothing to hold, nothing to keep fussing with. I just put it on and sat back — warmth and a gentle massage, together. And for the first time in a long while, my knee felt nice.
And that's all I've wanted for years now.
And I wasn't stuck beside an outlet. I could use it wherever I settled in — in my chair with my tea in the evening, or on the edge of the bed before I even stood up in the morning. Nothing to plug in, nothing to trip over. I just used it whenever my knee needed it and got on with my day.
That first morning, I sat on the edge of the bed — where I usually sit for a good 10 minutes just waiting for my knees to agree to work — and I wrapped it on.
A little while later I went to get up. I braced my hand on the nightstand, took the weight on the better leg first, eased into it slow, and waited for that sharp catch on the inside of the knee that tells me the day's begun.
But this time, it wasn't there. Not gone completely, I won't lie to you. But dull. Quiet. Something I could get up and walk right past.
And I honestly couldn't recall the last time the first step of the day wasn't a struggle.
But here's the moment I'll actually remember.
A couple of weeks in, I'd been using it before the grandbabies came over. And when the little one patted the floor and said "Grandma, sit" —
I sat down on the floor with her. And when we were done, I took my time, got a hand on the couch, and I came back up.
Not gracefully. But on my own. Without a scene. Without my granddaughter watching me struggle.
Ron caught my eye from across the room. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
Now, I'm not going to tell you this is a cure. It isn't. It won't fix arthritis and it won't give me back a young woman's knees. Nothing you buy will do that.
What it does is make a stiff, locked-up knee feel looser. More manageable. It gives me the mornings back. Dinner on my feet. The floor with my grandbabies. Walking beside my husband instead of him waiting on me.
I'm still careful on the stairs — I won't pretend otherwise. But I don't start every morning wondering whether my own home is quietly becoming too much for me.
It gives me the little things. Which, it turns out, were never little at all.
If you're where I was — tired of creams and pills that don't do enough, frightened of the surgery, and quietly watching your family start to worry about you — I just wanted you to know.
It's called the Lanarie Knee Relief Pro. I'll leave the link. That's all it is — just one grandmother telling another that there's something here worth knowing.
I only wish I'd found it before my granddaughter learned that Grandma stays in her chair.
Disclosure
This is an advertorial for the Lanarie Knee Relief Pro. The story reflects one customer's individual experience; results vary. The Lanarie Knee Relief Pro is a comfort device, not a medical device, and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, including osteoarthritis. Always follow the usage instructions and speak with your doctor about managing your knee osteoarthritis.
