-=> CHARLES ANGELICH wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 CA>> I am told that the glue holding the artificial knee joint
 CA>> into the bone will let go after some years and needs to be
 CA>> re-glued depending how active a person is.

 WC> Yup, watched some medical documentaries. Favorite part is
 WC> after drilling when they hammer the three flanged spike
 WC> into the bone.

 CA> I don't recall anything like that. I did see them using a tool
 CA> to shape the hole to accept the pin for the joint and a tool to
 CA> ream out the hole. Painful to watch when you think it might be
 CA> your turn some day. :-\

Oh yeah they had a jig much like when cutting and machining precision 
parts to get the angle and alignment right before gluing and
hammering it home. I enjoyed watching the procedure as I was
watching it with a registered nurse who was extremely squemish
and I had some fun at her expense. 
When my knee was first injured I had an arthrogram where they inject dye
into the knee to highlight the injury.
First they come out with a reasonably sized syringe and inject
some dye, somewhat painful. You are just thinking that wasn't too
bad when they twist off the syringe from the needle and slap 
another over twice it's size on, now that hurt pretty bad.
Than comes the third syringe of dye that looks appropriate for 
an elephant and that one really sucks as the dye forces nerves
around causing some pretty bad pain.
Pretty nurse present so macho attitude didn't allow me to utter 
a whimper but I couldn't prevent my entire body from
literally vibrating on that gurney.

 WC> My knee's are unfortunately the least of my worries.
 WC> Missing 2 1/2 inches of my lumber spine has somewhat more
 WC> serious ramifications.

 CA> One of my long time friends brother had a wall fall on him when
 CA> he was a housing carpenter. Crushed two vertebra that they
 CA> replaced with plastic vertebra. I've seen him, since that time,
 CA> lifting heavy objects, climbing ladders, he's even done some
 CA> shingling on the side for extra money. He seems to be doing
 CA> well with the repairs?

Well he had access to private insurance I presume?
Medical care for the disabled in this country is another matter
entirely.  See I'd upgraded jobs just before hurt and the required
90 days had not elapsed for insurance benefits to kick in :-(
Had to wait for SSDI approval before any medical care :-(
I went to Voc. Rehab. and even though I already had
medicaid A and B it took 18 months of evaluation of my motivation
and ability to pursue returning to work I was allowed into a
job retraining program. After that and that kid crashed her car 
into me I found my medical options limited to three approved
orthopedic surgeons. I had an orthopedic surgeon who was
very well respected, had previously under private insurance done
a top notch job on me, Harry Wassel, he wasn't on the list :-(
Dr. Wassel wouldn't operate unless he was all but certain the surgery 
would help you and I'd previously when still working followed his 
advice not doing two surgeries on separated shoulders but doing one 
on the knee. Everything worked out great.
Charles Finn OTOH was on the approved list and opposed my
literally begging for a spinal fusion in favor of a discectomy.
See my father suffered a similar injury to mine falling
off a ladder and was right back to work after spinal fusion. 
 I OTOH having no option and the doctors assurances finally 
 agreed to the discectomy, bad decision, bad outcome.

 CA> The _other_ factor is that even people born with one leg
 CA> shorter than the other will experience lower back pain as a
 CA> result of having their hips tiltled most of the time. It's
 CA> possible that if the knees were working properly it would
 CA> relieve some stresses from your lower back?

 If my back were OK I could entirely ignore the knees and 
 except for the occasional unexpected fall and the rather 
 amusing snap, crackle, pop and crunching noises they make.
 Muscle tone would take up a lot of slack.
 Fact is I attribute the recent deterioration of stability in
 my right knee to loss of muscle tone caused by limited mobility
 caused by the spinal injury.
 Now when I overdo, and that doesn't take much, and feel the two
 vertabre in my spine crunch together that's not in the least 
 amusing :-( Most of the time I don't take a fall when it happens
 but that particular feeling makes me very quesy despite
 the fact it usually doesn't actually hurt. Some dramatic exceptions
 when a nerve is pinched off, nearly broke my arm one time
 reacting to the induced lurch, did break a wooden framed glass
 door and on another occasion broke a folding wooden chair I
 was walking by on the way to the floor.
 Currently one or two cracked ribs from a unexpected fall on
 New Years Eve, a very minor annoyance.
 
 CA> Not a doctor here nor attempting to be one. Just a concerned
 CA> long time suffer of similar ailments.

I sure hope you're not as bad off as I am.
Pisses me off when they spend 16 million rehabilitating
a whale for release back into the wild when I could still
he working had that spinal fusion been done.
Finn cited a 5 percent morbidity rate for that surgery 
but I would have accepted a 30 percent risk to have
a real chance of returning to work, in fact I plainly
stated that to his face at the time!
As it turns out the surgery he did do left me
quite a bit worse off than before.
I had a job waiting had such a fusion procedure been successfully done.
In fact I never had trouble finding jobs even when the market
was supposed to be tight, a bit of extra effort always did the trick.
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