--- In stocktonfencingclub@yahoogroups.com, "Bruce Canino" <caninobd@v...>
wrote:
>
> BTW, What's the story with your knee? Will you be around at all this
> year or you going under the knife?
>

Hmmm…. My knee?
Where do I begin…..

Ok well anyway you know half the story already but beginning in May the knee got
very
bad. So bad I just had to quit fencing and seek multiple medical opinions.

So I get to see one of the top Orthopedic Surgeons in the country, Dr.
Bartalozzi.at
Pennsylvania Hospital. Really great doc, I highly recommend.

He had a cool hypothesis . Maybe as my leg got stronger and stronger I lost
more and
more flexibility in the left leg and this pulled my kneecap closer and closer
causing it to
grind more and more. Sounds good right? So We try PT to loosen the knee cap,
get an
MRI to see if I am a good candidate for cartilage replacement therapy (it is a
pair of
surgeries that replace your cartilage with your very own cartilage).

Well 6 weeks of PT and the knee was still getting worse. I became so bad that
every step I
took I had some level of discomfort. Not good. The more I did the more it hurt
but the
pain never really goes away.

I go see Bartalozzi again and he believes the cartilage replacement would be at
best a 50%
chance of working and he thought the chances were very good that if it failed it
would only
cause me MORE pain.

There is one surgery he is sure will help me but it is EXTREEM and we are gonna
think that
over while we try other things. So this week I started a series of injections
in the knee of
this stuff called Hylagan (or hylaronic acid). It is used in arthritis patients
to lubricate the
knee. It is very hit and miss with Patella femoral pain patients but what the
heck it is
better than the surgery he is sure may work. This surgery is a doozy.

It is called the Faulkerson Procedure, developed by Dr. Faulkerson in Ct. (my
Dr won't do
the procedure he would send me to see Faulkerson himself)…. Anyway the procedure
is
designed to change the normal path of the kneecap. My kneecap is gliding over
my joint
in such a way that the bare spot is getting irritated every time I move my leg.
If we change
how the kneecap glides I will have no more pain…in theory.

How do you change the direction of the kneecap you might ask? Well it is
simple. As you
may know the tendons that hold the kneecap on are attached to the femur (thigh
bone)
and the tibia (shin bone). So to adjust the path of the kneecap you just need
to move the
tendons.

So Faulkerson designed his procedure to move the tendons in the lower half of
the leg by
slicing the Tiba bone in half (down the front of the bone) then moving the bone
that is
attached to the tendons to a new place and pinning it back together with the
other half of
the leg bone.

Just incase you missed that, they cut my leg in half down ward.

The average is 5 days in the hospital on a Morphine IV….. most people agree the
worst
kind of surgery pain is when they have to cut bone. Followed by 2-3 months of no
wieght
bearing, followed by another 6 months of PT.

As eager as I am to have that surgery right away I thought it would be wise to
try the
injections and see what happens.

They do 5 injections, one per week for 5 weeks. The Dr. Doing them says most
people
don't see relief until about a month after the 5th injection. You can have this
series of
injections 2 times per year.

I have had my first injection on Tuesday and I don't want to jump the gun or
anything but
today is the first day I have been pain free for at least a couple of months.
Maybe it is
working or maybe it is because I have a cold and I am just delusional.

Anyway keep your fingers crossed for me.

Other than the knee I am doing very well.

I hope that if i can straighten the knee problem out I will be there....and yes
I will be at the
very least be making cameo appearances. Oh and on the plus side of all this
theDr. says
that if i can figure out a way to ignore or lesson the pain in my knee he says i
can go back
to it anytime i want. He doesn't believe I would be doing any more damage to
it! yay!