Don't miss your grandson's game-winning touch down.

My knee pain, like most, started with just a little ache here and there. You know, spending too much time kneeling in the garden and such. But, through the years, that pain in my knee really started to affect my ability to do the things I wanted.

‘Poor old grandma’ usually wound up sitting alone on the bottom row of the bleachers at my grandson’s football games because I couldn’t climb the stairs to the better seats. You can’t see anything from down there and I was so disappointed when I couldn’t see my only grandson make the game winning touchdown. After that disappointing night, I gave into the doctor’s (and my husband’s) request and scheduled my total knee replacement.

Being a take charge kind of gal, I knew that my husband wouldn’t be able to take care of me after surgery. Don’t get me wrong, he would try, but you can just imagine how that story would end. So I talked to some friends and decided that I would spend my ‘getting back to life’ days letting others wait on me at Mulberry instead of suffering through my husband’s care.

Felt like I was staying at a fine hotel.

My spacious rehab suite was beautifully decorated and was more than I could have ever imagined. This private home away from home was almost as great as being in a fine hotel – minus the bum knee, of course.

I enjoyed a private bath, garden view and a nice little kitchenette for when my children and grandchildren came to visit. I even had a nice, large screen TV that my husband begged to watch football on every Sunday. I gave in to him a time or two because I did make him suffer through quite a few movies on the Lifetime channel during my stay.

Some evenings, I would be tired from working so hard in therapy that my husband and I would take advantage of eating from room service opposed to dining with our new found friends in the dining room. It was nice to be able to get settled in nice and cozy, enjoy our meal together and have a wonderful conversation.

Rehab was hard work, but it was worth it.

I’m not going to kid anyone by saying that rehab was the best time in my life, not by any means. It was hard work, but my therapists and nurses did their best to ensure that I was comfortable every step of the way. Each day it got easier and I knew that I was on my way to not ever missing another game winning touchdown again.

The name of Mulberry’s rehab reprogram is Reclaim. Looking back on my experience I can see that Reclaim is the perfect name for their program because I did just that, I reclaimed my ability to live my life the way I want to!