I'm sharing this with you with the hope that it will benefit at least one person. I feel a responsibility to share what I have learned "on my way to getting a total knee replacement."
I was scheduled for knee replacement in Hattiesburg in December and I got cold feet. I had heard the horrible stories of the painful rehabilitation and how some patients took OxyContin for three months after surgery.
After I chickened out, I went online trying to understand why the rehab was so painful. What I learned is the painful rehab isn't caused by the actual knee replacement, but by the damage done to other things around your knee. The most painful problem is the splitting of the quadriceps. Without the full use of this muscle you have problems getting the bend back and holding your leg perfectly parallel to the floor, i.e., walking!
In this search I began to read about a procedure called Minimal Invasive Knee Replacement with Quad Sparing. This procedure allows shorter rehab time, less loss of blood and better use of the knee. When I asked my spinal/joint physician in Hattiesburg about this procedure, she had never heard of it. I then went to e-mailing every orthopedic surgeon who had an e-mail address that I could find around the country.
Following one of my early morning mass e-mails I got a reply from Touro in New Orleans. Their representative answered my questions and referred me to a physician who performs this procedure, Dr. Richard Meyer. I called Dr. Meyer's office later that morning, talked to his nurse, asked her all the questions that I had learned to ask from reading articles, and she had all the correct answers.
I was in his office the next morning and scheduled my surgery at Touro that day. Dr. Meyer has been performing this type surgery since 2005 and he also does Minimally Invasive Hip Replacements. Two important things I learned from my experience:
1-Begin your pre-op exercises weeks in advance of the surgery. I didn't.
2-Stay with your post-op exercise program even though it really hurts.
Before this search, I had never heard of Touro, but if I had known about their rehabilitation hospital, I would have gone there and later searched for a surgeon.
It's out of this world! Each room is a suite. One wall of my suite was 36 feet of floor to ceiling windows where you could see the West Bank Bridge at night or downtown. Each patient is urged to bring a family member with them. This person is the patient's coach, and is taken care of as well as the patients.
The preparation Touro gives you before surgery is amazing! And, each patient enters the hospital on Monday night and they go home Friday. The only day you're in bed is the day of surgery. After that you're doing physical therapy. The day after surgery you are up walking, and the next day you climb a flight of stairs. I thought I was their poster child for recovery after surgery, but Dr. Meyer told me I was about normal for his patients.
Another advantage is rather than putting you totally under for the surgery, you're in a "twilight zone" which allows a faster recovery. Five hours after surgery I was sitting up in bed in my room trading stocks online with my laptop. They encourage you to bring all "your electronic" devices.
When the home health physical therapist came for the first time to assess my needs, he told me that if I had been his patient for awhile he might release me. Since my quad was spared any damage, I was able to hold my rehabbed leg parallel to the floor for minutes. One of the other goals of the physical therapist is to get the patient to be able to bend his/her knee back to 110-140 degrees while sitting in a chair. Most patients struggle to get back to 90 degrees, and he told me on the first visit that I was at about 110 degrees. Less than three weeks after surgery, I was at 130 degrees.
When the home health nurse came the first time to evaluate my overall health, she almost stroked out when I got out of my chair and walked, very briskly, across the room to my walker. She said she had never seen anyone that mobile seven days after surgery. But she had never seen a patient who had the minimal invasive surgery performed. She, too, had never seen a scar that small or rehabilitation so fast.
My thanks go out to the many friends who were my prayer partners during the surgery and even now. A Super A+ to Dr. Meyer, his nurses and the rehabilitation staff at Touro.
Joe Fannin