JointRoad: Knee & Hip Recovery

JointRoad is for anyone in the first twelve weeks after a knee or hip replacement, and for the partner or adult child helping them through it. It is built around the questions that come up at eleven at night, when the joint is swollen, the discharge papers are somewhere in a bag, and the only thing within reach is a phone.

It starts with one number: your surgery date. Choose knee or hip, enter the date, and JointRoad counts every day from there, D+0 on the day itself through week twelve. Each morning there is a single card for where you are, written in everyday language, describing what tends to be common at that point. When you have read it, you press a stamp. On a hard day the stamp is the whole ritual, and on a good day it sits above whatever else you choose to record. Under the reassurance there is always a second line: the signs that should not wait, like a possible clot or infection, and the number to call. The two travel together on every card.

Recording is light by design. Rate pain from 0 to 10 and note swelling or bruising with a couple of taps. After physical therapy, copy in the flexion and extension numbers your therapist gave you, or for a hip, the flexion figure and which walking aid you are using now. JointRoad stores what you enter and nothing more; it has no way to measure a joint and does not try. Tick off the week's rehab items, or add your own. The list is there to keep track, and if your care team gave you a program, theirs is the one to follow. Whatever you log builds a week-by-week graph, and the stamps you collect line the road so you can look back at how far you have come.

Then there is the appointment. Questions pile up all week and vanish the moment you sit down across from your surgeon, so JointRoad gives you a place to write them as they come. Before the visit, generate the summary: pain and range of motion by week, rehab adherence, your notes, and the twelve-week trend, laid out on one to three pages, with your question list on the last page and a check box beside each one. Ask them in order, check them off as you get answers, and hand over a record instead of a recollection. Share it as a file or print it straight from your phone.

If surgery is still ahead, enter the scheduled date. JointRoad counts down to it and walks you through preparing your home, one item at a time, then switches to recovery cards on the day.

Everything you record is stored on your device. There is no account, no server, and no analytics, so the app itself sends nothing anywhere; the only thing that leaves the phone is a PDF you decide to share. Nothing needs to be synced or deleted from a cloud later, and if you want a clean slate, Settings wipes it all in one step. JointRoad is free, with no subscription, no in-app purchases, and no ads.

JointRoad is a recovery journal, not medical advice. It does not diagnose, treat, or measure anything, and it does not replace your surgeon or physical therapist. When something concerns you, contact your care team. The app is designed for a time when getting up is real effort: large touch targets, a layout that works in one hand, and text that scales with your system font size.