TKR both knees

Status
Not open for further replies.
Too funny bottomshollow. My girlfriend told me when others are looking at me stunned, to say, "You should see the OTHER guy!" LOL. :rotfl: Thanks

Jackie, yes I've had my setbacks and they are not done yet. The nose is coming along nicely even though the bruise is just getting more colorful and bigger, the bandages hurt worst than the cut now, so that's good.
 
it's always something 6.jpg
Life has a way of throwing us lots of curve balls that really keep us confused and frustrated at times. But these thing, too, shall pass. Just wish they'd hurry up so you can get to where you want to go. Hang in there, babe, it's just gotta get better.

Take care and keep us posted. We care. hugs 12.jpg
 
LOL thanks. I loved Roseanne Rosannadanna! So true.
 
Hello, I am so sorry to hear about your latest incident with your knee and then needing surgery on your nose! I hope you are starting to feel better! :console2:
 
Thanks Sonja. I hope you are doing well too. My nose is healing nicely now.

I ran across a doctor, Kevin Stone, in San Franciso on TED doing bio knee surgery. Very interesting. I think I will send him my xrays and MRI and see if I am a candidate and what it all entails. There is a video at the link below. The transcript I included below.

He is making a "paste" from your own stem cells to regrow arthritic bone, and uses pig or cow parts that have been stripped of rejecting problems and "humanized". 80% success rate. Not clear if it's for TKR or just partials. Will find out.

http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_stone_the_bio_future_of_joint_replacement.html

So let me just start with my story. So I tore my knee joint meniscus cartilage playing soccer in college. Then I went on to tear my ACL, the ligament in my knee, and then developed an arthritic knee. And I'm sure that many of you in this audience have that same story, and, by the way, I married a woman who has exactly the same story. So this motivated me to become an orthopedic surgeon and to see if I couldn't focus on solutions for those problems that would keep me playing sports and not limit me. So with that, let me just show you a quick video to get you in the mood of what we're trying to explain.
Narrator: We are all aware of the risk of cancer, but there's another disease that's destined to affect even more of us: arthritis. Cancer may kill you, but when you look at the numbers,arthritis ruins more lives. Assuming you live a long life, there's a 50 percent chance you'll develop arthritis. And it's not just aging that causes arthritis. Common injuries can lead to decades of pain, until our joints quite literally grind to a halt. Desperate for a solution, we've turned to engineering to design artificial components to replace our worn-out body parts, but in the midst of the modern buzz around the promises of a bionic body, shouldn't we stop and ask if there's a better, more natural way? Let's consider an alternative path. What if all the replacements our bodies need already exist in nature, or within our own stem cells?This is the field of biologic replacements, where we replace worn-out parts with new, natural ones.
Kevin Stone: And so, the mission is: how do I treat these things biologically? And let's talk about both what I did for my wife, and what I've done for hundreds of other patients. First thing for my wife, and the most common thing I hear from my patients, particularly in the 40- to 80-year-old age group, 70-year-old age group, is they come in and say, "Hey, Doc, isn't there just a shock absorber you can put in my knee? I'm not ready for joint replacement." And so for her, I put in a human meniscus allograft donor right into that [knee] joint space. And [the allograft] replaces [the missing meniscus]. And then for that unstable ligament, we put in a human donor ligament to stabilize the knee. And then for the damaged arthritis on the surface, we did a stem cell paste graft, which we designed in 1991, to regrow that articular cartilage surface and give it back a smooth surface there. So here's my wife's bad knee on the left, and her just hiking now four months later in Aspen, and doing well. And it works, not just for my wife, but certainly for other patients. The girl on the video, Jen Hudak, just won the Superpipe in Aspen just nine months after having destroyed her knee, as you see in the other image -- and having a paste graft to that knee.And so we can regrow these surfaces biologically.
So with all this success, why isn't that good enough, you might ask. Well the reason is because there's not enough donor cycles. There's not enough young, healthy people falling off their motorcycle and donating that tissue to us. And the tissue's very expensive. And so that's not going to be a solution that's going to get us global with biologic tissue. But the solution is animal tissue because it's plentiful, it's cheap, you can get it from young, healthy tissues, but the barrier is immunology. And the specific barrier is a specific epitope called the galactosyl, or gal epitope. So if we're going to transplant animal tissues to people, we have to figure out a way to get rid of that epitope.
So my story in working with animal tissues starts in 1984. And I started first with cow Achilles tendon, where we would take the cow Achilles tendon, which is type-I collagen,strip it of its antigens by degrading it with an acid and detergent wash and forming it into a regeneration template. We would then take that regeneration template and insert it into the missing meniscus cartilage to regrow that in a patient's knee. We've now done that procedure, and it's been done worldwide in over 4,000 cases, so it's an FDA-approved and worldwide-accepted way to regrow the meniscus. And that's great when I can degrade the tissue. But what happens for your ligament when I need an intact ligament? I can't grind it up in a blender. So in that case, I have to design -- and we designed with Uri Galili and Tom Turek -- an enzyme wash to wash away, or strip, those galactosyl epitopes with a specific enzyme. And we call that a "gal stripping" technique. What we do is humanize the tissue.It's by gal stripping that tissue we humanize it (Laughter), and then we can put it back into a patient's knee. And we've done that. Now we've taken pig ligament -- young, healthy, big tissue, put it into 10 patients in an FDA-approved trial -- and then one of our patients went on to have three Canadian Masters Downhill championships -- on his "pig-lig," as he calls it. So we know it can work. And there's a wide clinical trial of this tissue now pending.
So what about the next step? What about getting to a total biologic knee replacement, not just the parts? How are we going to revolutionize artificial joint replacement? Well here's how we're going to do it. So what we're going to do is take an articular cartilage from a young, healthy pig, strip it of its antigens, load it with your stem cells, then put it back on to that arthritic surface in your knee, tack it on there, have you heal that surface and then create a new biologic surface for your knee. So that's our biologic approach right now. We're going to rebuild your knee with the parts. We're going to resurface it with a completely new surface.
But we have other advantages from the animal kingdom. There's a benefit of 400 million years of ambulation. We can harness those benefits. We can use thicker, younger, better tissues than you might have injured in your knee, or that you might have when you're 40, 50 or 60. We can do it as an outpatient procedure. We can strip that tissue very economically,and so this is how we can get biologic knee replacement to go global.
And so welcome to super biologics. It's not hardware. It's not software. It's bioware. It's version 2.0 of you. And so with that, coming to a -- (Laughter) coming to an operating theater near you soon, I believe.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
 
KayeKaye I'm glad to hear that your nose is healing well! :thumb: Smart idea sending your MRI and X-rays to Kevin Stone, hopefully you'll be a good candidate! Please let us know how it works out for you! :friends:
 
Well, just chronicling the journey again. Broke down and got a Synvisc-Oneshot in the left knee today. Had one in my right knee a year and a half ago and it still feels pretty good. Still battling the teeth to get the ok to do the knees. Seems like a vicious cycle.
 
Good morning KayeKaye. I see you are still waiting in the wings for your surgery(ies).
Sometimes you just got to break down and do what you got to do for the pain.
I do hope the shot gives you some relief.
I haven't tried the what I call rooster shots. but suppose if someone offered i would give it a try.
Nothing ventured nothing gained. It might help stave off an inevitable tkr(s) in my future.
No one wants to have a tkr of btkr. But if it will bring us back some freedom, arthritis has stole from us, then it should well worth it.
I do hope your wait isn't too much longer. I see you been around almost a year now.
Going on 2 for me. I noticed my join date is my daughter's birthday, July 26th, she will be 14.
Will keep rooting for you, sorry i haven't visited in so long, just so much going on.
Just now getting settled into a new routine.
Take care... :flwrysmile:
 
Well, just chronicling the journey again. Broke down and got a Synvisc-Oneshot in the left knee today. Had one in my right knee a year and a half ago and it still feels pretty good. Still battling the teeth to get the ok to do the knees. Seems like a vicious cycle.

I am waiting for the day when we hear you say, they have scheduled me for surgery! I went through Hyalgen, , Synvisc, and lots of other "remedies" before getting my knees replaced.

Life has changed so much for me since then! I am on the last leg of my journey, and I feel fantastic! I want you to feel the way I do! Life has taken on new meaning and I have already started working on my "bucket list!"
 
:thankyou:
Thanks Sheryl and Sonja. I feel like I am sitting in a box with time ticking away. So much I want to do, normal home maintenance, like painting, weeding. Long way off for me I guess.

Sheryl if you do have to keep waiting I would recommend the Synvisc-One shot. It's expensive but it sure worked for me last time, it's been a year and half on the right knee. The doctor said it's used all over the world for all kinds of arthritis, hips, fingers etc. but only ok'd for knees here.

Sonja I'm so encouraged with your progress, I know that it has been a long road to recovery, your new pic looks great! You are such a hard worker, don't know if I can live up to that dedication but it gives me a mark to aim at.

The left knee felt fine after the shot Tuesday, no pain, but felt very swollen or bloated Wednesday though it didn't show. Sleeping was still painful. Walking seems just funny without the pain of the knee and I seem to be oddly favoring it to the point of stressing my hips. Don't know how to overcome that. Today, Thursday, I did a half hour of sit in the chair exercises. :yahoo: But I am still going to take it easy other than that today. Going out this weekend so hoping for normal-like walking.
 
Today, Sunday, I woke up in a lot of pain. I twisted my left knee in my sleep. Had a bad day. So. I hope it shakes out and the shot takes affect soon. I had such good outcome with the right knee's shot, over a year and half now.
 
Thursday, still slow going. Pain in bed mostly, from turning and getting out of bed. Haven't taken the amount of meds I used to take. Which has revealed some new aches and pains that were hiding behind the meds I was taking. Nothing serious, just hands and the unrelenting toothaches. Gave up and just took 2 tylenol and 2 ibuprofen now to try to go to sleep again. But there's a great old movie on, sigh.
 
It's been quite a while and I'm back. I need to schedule my surgery sooner now due to our health care changing next year.

Still having teeth pain. The final answer will be pulling 2 teeth and deciding if I want implants or something. Not happy. I read over the news release that no evidence has been found for infections from dentistry so that is encouraging.

Walking has been ok, I just do much less than ever before.

Sleeping has been ok too but I have changed to being a night owl for the first time in my life. Don't know why other than I don't have to get up for work and I'm not out walking around very much. Not exercising either and have to start that up agin.

The shot has lasted for a year now, and I could get another one on the other knee because it's been about 3 years since I got the synvistic one shot on the left knee. But it is so expensive can't afford it right now.
 
@KayeKaye,

Welcome back!

Once you get your new knees, the exercise will follow. After recovery, it will be amazing how much better you will feel and I know that it will be a life changer for you just like it has been for me!

I will be power walking, wogging in the 1/2 marathon in Houston in January! I never have done anything like that before in my life but have a "bucket list" now!:happydance:

I am out living the "best of my life", instead of the rest of my life now! We will be here for you to support you every step of the way!:friends:
 
Thanks Sonja! I quick read your recent posts, hope your foot is better.

Now I have to work up my courage all over again.
 
@KayeKaye,

We all had a decision to make at the time. But the life I am leading now far exceeds any life I could have hoped for before replacements! I just got back from a Pink Out Zumba party!:happydance:
 
Hi I am back again. Thinking about September for my btkr. Went to the doctor today finally after a very long time. Decided to get shots in my knees because I have to travel next week and it's been really bad lately. So the doctor decided to give me a Synviscone shot in the right knee and a cortisone shot in the left knee to see which one helps more. He was not willing to do Synviscone in both knees. That was this morning first thing and now it 11 pm. I have been pretty immobile today but did go up and down the steps out for dinner. The pain is gone now but the stiffness is setting in. The thing I didn't get answered at the doctor was if I should let the knees be, or should I be moving them. Now it's Saturday tomorrow and won't get any answers till Monday. Anyone have any experience with how mobile they were after shots? Thanks!
 
Hi @KayeKaye - I haven't had injections, but I am sure someone will be along to provide some input soon :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

BoneSmart #1 Best Blog

Staff online

  • Jamie
    Staff member since Feb, 2009

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
65,179
Messages
1,597,054
BoneSmarties
39,363
Latest member
HikerWalker
Recent bookmarks
0
Back
Top Bottom