yardape said:
You know what? Only an idiot would go into a hospital with with a Pollyanna attitude. Of course you have to keep your eyes open just like anything else in life. On the other hand wether its you or a spouse,.... entering surgery with a doom and gloom attitude as if there is a booby trap around every corner is paranoia and totally unhealthy. There have been volumes written on the psychology of recovery. If you think you're going to get sick and die you probably will.
I am not trying to influence your way of thinking at all. But here is my position on a few points you have raised.
I don’t recall a single person stating that a “Pollyanna” attitude entering a surgery was the appropriate way to approach such an endeavor. Regardless it is normal to have a certain amount of fear upon going into surgery as it is only natural. Joint replacement surgery shouldn’t be entered into lightly and with blind trust in my opinion. God forbid things happen to go wrong, it isn’t like a bad haircut that will grow out a month later and a different barber can do a better job. As I stated earlier, you have a lot less options available to fall back upon to rectify the problem after your natural joint is gone. Having a healthy respect of the complexities involved in a surgery isn’t being “Pollyanna”.
The original poster wasn’t attempting to create a statistical model off of
experiences. He was merely asking if anyone had any experience with knee surgeries and how they turned out. Naturally I would expect most responses to be positive as the surgery statistics would bear. But I have some knowledge and experience to the contrary so seen as he is asking for this type of feedback I am not going to withhold what I know. While my hip replacement isn’t exactly the same as a knee replacement, I do feel with my past experiences that I have a certain level of knowledge that someone entering a surgical procedure isn’t going to have. Hip surgeries in general are less complicated than knee surgeries so it increases my need to proceed cautious and well informed manner. Coincidentally my own orthopedics office has asked me on more than one occasion to allow a perspective patient with a similar background as mine and similar concerns could call me via the telephone to talk about my experiences with hip replacement surgery. Seems they didn’t take offense to my feelings and experiences.
I’m not sure why you would mention your friend that is a surgeon at the Mayo clinic that due to drug abuse had a patient tear a rotator cuff after the joint surgery. Clearly his patient’s outcome had absolutely nothing to do with the level of his expertise or the conditions of the operating environment that he works within.
In my own cited examples I can assure you that my grandmother wasn’t hitting the crack pipe following her knee replacement nor was there anything that she was at fault in the complications that had arose post surgery.
Nor was my 82 year old next door neighbor that was a Marine had fought at Iwo Jima and still is in great physical shape.
Nor was my best friends father who at the age of 71 continued to play softball in a senior’s league five days a week in Arizona, at least before he had surgery.
Each one of them had some sort of complications following their surgeries. A couple of them have commented to me personally that if they had to do it all over again they wouldn’t have had the surgery as the end result wasn’t worth it.
Ultimately what I worry about is someone going to a pre-surgery interview with a surgeon and not having a good grasp of what types of questions and concerns they should address and work out with the surgeon. The natural thing to do is to just listen to the expert and answer yes and no when appropriate and schedule your surgery date.
In the case of my best friends father that played softball (Stu). Stu always was working out and running. For the 30 years I have known him he has been in exceptional shape. All the activity has had a negative impact in the form of wearing out the cartilage in his poor knees. Someone on one of his softball teams had knee replacement surgery and everything turned out great and that person felt a lot better. So Stu goes to an orthopedic surgeon and schedules a bi-lateral knee replacement. Stu was under the false impression (whether the surgeon was aware of this is unknown by me) that he would be laid up for about six months but after that he would be back to playing softball, with relatively pain free knees.
It turns out it took him two years of recovery time to return to playing again. He still has pain, not the same as before as it is a different and new pain in one of his knees. If he had to do it all over again he would have skipped the surgery or at the most done one knee at a time. This is what he told me on the phone 10 hours ago.
In complaining about his knee, the surgeon told him that most of his patients that are Stu’s age aren’t as active as he is so usually the problems he is experiencing aren’t as much of an issue to them. Kind of like being told everything will turn out okay, then when it isn’t and you have the feeling a pebble is in your knee that you are the exception and not the norm and you’ll have to get used to it. Now he his outcome isn’t probably typical, but will the surgeons statistics bear that out? What constitutes a good surgery? How much irregular pain, infection or other bugaboos have to occur to not have a surgery be successful?
So I would strongly recommend anyone to considering joint replacement surgery to take a long and hard look at what you currently can do and what you can’t do. Then discuss this with a surgeon and get a good honest and realistic response on how likely the end result will be in relation to your expectations. You may find that your quality of life can be increased (much like mine has been) or you may find that some things you had assumed would be there for you afterwards are not realistic and you might want to tolerate your current condition to wait for a better period in your life to chance those results.
I wouldn’t characterize joint replacement surgery as a no-brainer. Tying your shoes is a no-brainer. But if we have you sit down and tie a knot in your shoes 1000 times, you’re bound to make a mistake. The same is true with surgery. As you stated earlier there can be a ton of complications during a surgery and all things go perfectly every time isn’t realistic. The good news is more good things occur than bad things. But I wouldn’t want to turn a deaf ear to the bad. In fact I would rather talk first to a surgeons cases that didn’t turn out well and then discuss it with some that turned out well. After that I would have a better feeling about what good results can come from this partnership with a surgeon.
Well, that’s all I have to say about that. If anyone has any other questions for me feel free to PM me.
