I am in my 60’s. I was an athlete in high-school, served a couple of years in the Army during Viet Nam. I later became a policeman in Colorado. I retired in 1993. As a cop I ran almost every day.
In short I have always been physically active, but don’t consider my activities excessive.
One day without any warning, I woke up with pain in my knees so bad that I couldn’t get out of bed. I was diagnosed with Arthritis in both knees. It was surprising to me because it came without warning and no-one in my family had a history of this disease.
I searched the internet and found sites like Chronicjointpain.com. This particular site offers advice and links that are helpful to people who suffer from arthritis. Some of the information suggests that there are alternatives to surgery. Certainly there probably are, but not for me.
For the next 5 years I received treatment by the Veterans hospital that consisted of injections of some kind of magic potions into my knees and pain medications. The strongest medication had codeine.
My doctor’s recommendation was to get by with pain medications until I just couldn’t take it any more before having the knees replaced. In July of the 5th year I had had enough. I was checked into the Phoenix Veterans hospital to have the procedure done on both knees.
It was not easy to find a doctor who would do both knees at the same time until I spoke with Dr. Sidel who was on loan to the VA from the Mayo Clinic. Sidel knew that mental preparation is a large part of taking on surgery such as this and he recognized that my fears about doing both knees at the same time were less than my dread of being required to do it twice at different times..
It made no sense to me to have the surgery performed on one knee, going through 6-9 months of rehab and then going through it all again. I had visions of being laid up for almost two years. Sidel agreed to do the surgery.
The great apprehension I had about the whole thing turned out to be unfounded. The surgery (6 hours) happened on a Monday morning. Tuesday morning I started rehab at the hospital and Wednesday morning I was home, walking up a flight of stairs.
The rehab lasted about 5 months and after about 10 months I no longer even though about my knees. I was completely pain free. I had my life back. Its been 4 years now and I believe that I made the right decision and received medical treatment that was second to none.
I tell people the story about my knees and most think I am exaggerating. According to Chronicjointpain.com knee surgery technology is better now than it was when I had it done.
They have Minimally Invasive Surgery. The pictures on this page were taken hours after the surgery. Today the scaring is barely visible.