New knee, new hip, back surgery: bending to your feet is off the table for weeks. So most mornings I stayed in socks, which meant I stayed on the couch, because socks on a tile floor with a walker is a fall waiting to happen. "Recovering from bilateral knee fractures. Stability," one woman wrote on our survey. Another: "Broken femur, release from rehab imminent."

My husband was on his knees at the door with my sneakers, both of us losing our tempers before breakfast. Getting dressed on your own is half of feeling like yourself again. That is what I was missing.

Day 1: I stood at the dresser, stepped in, and the soft collar sprang back around my heel and held it on. No reaching, no bending, no help, no shoehorn, no chair at the door. "No shoe strings," wrote a woman with numbness in her feet after knee surgery. "Easy to put on and take off," wrote another.

The little cord on top goes slack if you want it looser. One woman whose husband uses a walker said the first morning he got them on by himself, he came to the kitchen in them before she was up. She had not seen that in a year.

With a new joint you are not fighting for footing. You want a flat, stable sole under you, not a thick heel that tips you forward, and you want to feel the floor.

One woman who broke all 5 metatarsals and had a foot fusion wrote: "These shoes give me just enough support, while still allowing me to use my full foot, AND help with traction for a more stable footing!" Day 7 I was standing tall and balanced. By the second week I was walking a little further each day, down the hall, then to the mailbox.

After surgery my foot and ankle were puffy for weeks, and nothing in the closet would go on without forcing. These are a soft stretch knit all the way around, so they go on over a swollen foot without a fight and stay snug at the heel.

"I had surgery on my big toe a bunion taken out in a new joint put in and these are the only shoes that are really comfortable to me to wear all the time," one woman wrote on her feedback form. The toe box is wide, so the toes spread and nothing presses. I ordered my usual size and the knit handled the rest.

2 pairs: one where you get dressed and one by the door, so recovery does not depend on anyone else. Every order comes with easy returns, no questions asked.

The easy-on sizes go first. If you have a surgery date on the calendar, or you just had one, and your size is showing in stock, take both while they last.