Stryde Precision Strap ad: 👇 They removed the staples yesterday

This bed was meant for me on the 14th of March. I rang and cancelled it on a Wednesday. I want to tell you why. My name is Beverley. I am 67. I live in Lincoln. The bed in the photograph is on Ward 4 at Lincoln County Hospital, where I was due to have my left knee replaced six weeks from today. The reason there is a walking frame next to it is that the staff send one up the night before, ready for the patient to use the morning after surgery. Mine arrived. I never did. I want to tell you what changed in the eleven days between the bed being prepped and me ringing the ward to cancel. I had been on the waiting list for 16 months. The letter came through the door in November 2024. The reason I was on the list was a simple piece of advice my GP had given me in the spring of that year, after my fourth cortisone injection had stopped working before the cycle finished. He said, "Beverley, this is as far as we can go without surgery." I had said, "what about my husband Derek? He is 70 and I look after him. How am I supposed to be in hospital?" He said, "we will work something out." So I went on the list, and I waited. In those 16 months on the waiting list, I tried, in this order: A neoprene knee brace from Boots, £42, which gave me a heat rash inside the first week. A copper compression sleeve recommended by my friend Janet, £28, which slid down my leg every time I walked. A magnetic knee strap from a catalogue, £67, which did absolutely nothing and which I kept wearing for three months because I was embarrassed I had spent £67. Three lots of paracetamol and ibuprofen in rotation, doctor approved. Voltarol gel, every night, every morning. A TENS machine my niece bought me for Christmas. Eight weeks of NHS physiotherapy, which I had done twice over the years and was sceptical about, and which, predictably, helped while I was going and stopped helping the week I stopped. The bed at Lincoln County was booked for the 14th of March. The pre-op was on the 28th of February. I went. I had the bloods. I had the MRSA swabs. I signed the consent form. The night I signed the form, I drove home and parked outside the house and did not go in for 20 minutes. Derek was watching the news in the lounge. I sat in the car and read the consent form leaflet again. The bit at the bottom about persistent pain. About how some patients still report significant pain at 12 months. The figure varies, but the leaflet I had said up to one in three. I had known the figure for months. Reading it that night was different. Three days later my granddaughter Lily, who is at university in Sheffield, sent me a Facebook reel about a thing called the Stryde Precision Strap. She had seen the woman in the video say something Lily had heard me say at Christmas. Quote, "the pain is not where you think. It is not in the joint. It is in one specific spot below your kneecap, where the tendon meets the bone." That was exactly what I had said to my granddaughter at Christmas dinner, with a knife and fork in my hand, pointing at my own knee. The strap was £29.90 for two, buy one get one free, with a 60 day money back guarantee. I ordered it that evening. It came on the Saturday. I want you to understand that I had eight days to try it before the surgery. Eight days. Not eight weeks. Eight days. I put it on, sat at the kitchen table, and stood up. The same chair I have sat in for 23 years. I stood up without the heave. I stood up without the gasp. I stood up. Day 1, I walked Derek down the road for the post. We had not done that walk together in 11 months. Day 3, I went up the stairs once without holding the bannister. Once. I came straight back down because I did not trust it. Day 7, I walked to the corner shop and back. 600 metres. I had not walked to the corner shop and back in over a year. Day 11, I rang Ward 4 at Lincoln County. I asked the lady who answered if she could put a note on my file that I would not be coming in for the operation on the 14th. She asked me why. I told her. There was a pause, and then she said, very quietly, "Beverley, that is the second one this week." I asked her to repeat what she had just said. She said, "I am not supposed to say this, but a strap. We have had two ladies cancel for the same reason this week. There is apparently something going round." There is apparently something going round. Here is what I have understood since. Every step you take, your quadriceps muscle fires and pulls on the patellar tendon with up to 17 times your bodyweight. All of that force concentrates into one tiny attachment point about 2 centimetres below the kneecap. That is the spot. That has been the spot in nearly every chronic knee patient since the human knee evolved. The strap sits exactly on that spot. It changes the angle between the kneecap and tendon. Spreads the force across the tendon instead of concentrating it on the damaged area. A study published in the Sports Health journal measured a 34% reduction in patellar tendon strain when worn correctly. You do not need to know the engineering. The lady on Ward 4 knew enough. If you have a letter on your kitchen worktop right now offering you a date for a partial or total knee replacement, please order the strap first. It is £29.90 for two, buy one get one free, with a 60 day money back guarantee. If your knee does not change in 60 days, you send the strap back and you get your money back, and you go to your operation. If it works, you ring the ward and you tell them, and you let an empty bed sit on Ward 4 for a couple of days until they fill it with someone who really needs it. I am not telling you to ignore your surgeon. I am telling you that 60 days is not long compared to a metal joint that lasts 15 years before it needs another operation. The bed on Ward 4 is empty. You do not have to fill it. 👉 https://getstryde.co/products/stryde-precision-strap