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OT-Miracles of Modern Medicine


Gold Canyon Kid #43974

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My wife Arizona Sunshine has not been able to shoot for several months due to serious medical issues with her knee. She had surgery in Oct to clean out the knee and several other treatments but in the end they did not work. She finally had total knee replacement surgery 2 weeks ago today. Her recovery has been an absolute miracle. She has been walking all over the house for about a week unassisted. As of Wed she got the OK from her doctor to resume all activities she felt like doing. She has full movement of the knee and zero pain in the leg or knee with zero pain meds. She had in home therapy 4 times and starts off site therapy with weights and bicycle this morning. We attribute her rapid recovery to several items including a lot of painful prep she did with weights and the stationary bicycle for several weeks before surgery, the very advanced minimal evasive high tech surgery performed by her surgeon, the excellent orthopedic only hospital, and the many prayers from her friends. She is looking forward to shooting her first match in early Feb. If any of you are thinking about this kind of surgery, do lots of prep work even if painful, pick a good doctor with very recent training, and a hospital that does nothing but this kind of surgery (to eliminate infections). Only problem I have had is slowing her down, since she feels so great with no pain for a change.

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Good to hear good news about knee replacements. A friend of mine had one several years ago and has had nothing but pain. The joint feels like it has grit in it, I believe the medical term is decrepitation. He applied for disability and got a copy of the surgeorn's notes. One thing that really stands out is: "Cut one inch too much from femur, glued it back on and cut to correct length."

A sports orthopedic clinic in Oklahoma City told him the only solution is to replace the joint with a new one. He's not ready for that.

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Good to hear good news about knee replacements. A friend of mine had one several years ago and has had nothing but pain. The joint feels like it has grit in it, I believe the medical term is decrepitation. He applied for disability and got a copy of the surgeorn's notes. One thing that really stands out is: "Cut one inch too much from femur, glued it back on and cut to correct length."

A sports orthopedic clinic in Oklahoma City told him the only solution is to replace the joint with a new one. He's not ready for that.

 

For my wife's suregery, they did a 3 D MRI of the knee. The doctor then worked via the internet with the knee manufacturer in Europe to design/select parts for a new knee just for her. The software produced 3D digital models of the knee, with and without the new knee installed. The software and hardware produced 3D full size plastic models of my wife's bone ends and two templets to drill 4 tiny holes in the bone ends. The surgeon could ready himself for the surgery by using the 3 D plastic bone models and the plastic templets for the holes which fit the real bone ends only one way. Once the 4 very small holes were drilled in the knee bones using the plastic templets, the surgeon could afix his tools to the 4 holes in each knee and with this perfect tool alignment make the proper bone cuts without other outside alignment or long rods in the bone as past surgeries have needed. This was all done with a much smaller than normal incision in the front of the knee and only one lengthwise cut to a single muscle-keeping strength in the leg tendons and muscles. The new knee parts were epoxied in place, a metal part glued to back of knee cap and it was reinstalled and the incision sewed up. The only difficulty the surgeon ran into was wife's bones were so hard he wore out two saw blades. I have copies of the surgery report and the CAD drawings of the knee before and after. Kinda high tech. A good friend had his knee replaced about 20 years ago, and back then they virtually cut the knee in half to start the process.

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