Interesting day.  Been on my multimodal pain regimen- ice, Tylenol, Alleve and the pain is at best 1 out of 10 and worst- 3 out of 10.  I focused on some bending exercises and easily got to 90°:   Pain is interesting.  It is like the sound of a barking dog.  If there is a…

There is a lot of talk about patient satisfaction in healthcare.  I think that we need to do more than talk about it.  We need to do something about it.  It starts with what patients want.  I am fortunate that my surgeon is a huge patient advocate.  Lets talk about his approach to pain management…

Tylenol is a great drug (the image is the chemical structure).  If it didn’t cause liver problems if you take too much it would be the greatest drug of all time.  Relieves pain, non-addictive, does not cause constipation.  I have to say- that’s a great triad.  The problem is that there is a limit to…

I am sitting here at “home” (I am recuperating at my surgeon’s home- I guess that’s not a common patient event BTW), having had the surgery that ended at 9:30 this morning.  I was in the car and back home before 12 noon. The above picture, of course, isn’t the story.  I know I have…

Two days before surgery.  The feeling I have now is that I just want the surgery to be done.  From the surgeon’s point of view the day before surgery is just a regular day.  I would have planned all the operations a week before so all that was left would be for me to show up.  As…

I woke up this morning with a remarkable amount of pain in my knee.  This should be no surprise, right?  In three days I am getting this knee joint surgically replaced because of the pain.  As I limped across the room, though, I realized that this is how I woke up for many days over…

I finished my preoperative physical therapy this morning.  For so many years I ordered this a was never really sure of its value.  Now I am sure- it’s really great.  It lowers the fear of what to expect and in a controlled setting reviews all the exercises before you have the postoperative pain.  Alex, Amber,…

There are so many pieces to the puzzle of preparing for surgery.  No matter how many patients I prepared for surgery from this side I really see how complex it is.  The major issue is that everyone who has to prepare for surgery had a life before having to prepare their life for surgery.  Now…

What can I say?  Fate caught up to my knee.  I have always had a certain amount of knee pain but at 59 I am scheduled to have a left total knee replacement this coming Monday, August 22, 2016.  I am writing this for my patients and for everyone having a knee replacement that is someone else’s…

It is really a strange moment of disbelief- that your will lose a part of your body.  When this moment happens you try to look back to see when it started.  Everyone can go really far back- to Pop Warner football or to a host of other relatively uneventful but memorable knee injuries.  Unless you…

This is what I genuinely believe- once you need a knee replacement there really isn’t a lot you can do to avoid it.  The only people, in my experience, that “avoided” a knee replacement with a particular exercise regimen or injection product didn’t need the knee replacement in the first place.  Once the bone on…