Judy, it will be a little longer than 12 weeks before it feels like your regular knee, it was real hard for me to go through, but I bet you'll do better. Make sure you do your exercises after surgery, especiall the one where you get like an old cookie sheet and sit in a chair where you can bend your knee back on the cookie sheet. Put your foot on the cookie sheet and slide it under your chair, you need to have the range of motion and this is the best exercise to do for that. They will push your knee back as far as they can each time you go to PT. I finally got mine to 110 degrees at the end of PT. Log on to my facebook and there is a video on there of me at Borgess after surgery. You will need a walker and a cane, believe me. I couldn't wait to start on the cane after the walker. I gained 10lbs with this surgery and it was on September 23rd last year. that's why I joined WW to lose this unwanted weight. Lost another half pound today at WW. The thought of even getting up to go to the restroom in the middle of the night was frightening, couldn't move out of bed to go, had to have my husband pull me up and move my leg down. I just think you should know what to expect cause no one gave me the news. Take the pain pills in the hospital. Guess what, when you first get out of surgery you go, wow, this is great, I can do this, I'll do my other knee very soon, well, what they do is give you an assortment of pain meds injected in the knee after surgery and you can do anything. Well, when this wore off, let me just tell you, you realize reality, wow. On top of all that, I couldn't take the strong pain medications they gave me, I was so nauseated and light headed and just took Tylenol, wow, I was in some real pain. I think maybe this could be just me, you might do real well, I'm a baby, but it's nice to know what might be. It will be a while before you can walk any distance without tiring. I tried to look around at Target with my daughter about 9 weeks post op and had to rest every couple minutes, just sat while she shopped. Let me tell you though right now I'm happy I did it, no pain. In fact, I can bend it pretty good now. It was hard to get my other knee to bend to get into a tight spot this weekend while the surgery knee did bend quite well. One good and one bad knee now. I will talk to you as you need info.