Mr. D’s Knees: The Impact of Total Knee Replacement Surgery on Quality of Life
When Bill Denington was preparing for total knee replacement surgery in early 2021 with Peter Loeb, MD, orthopedic surgeon at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH), he told Dr. Loeb he had two goals.
The first goal was simple. Bill just wanted to mow his own yard.
“I’ve already accomplished that,” he says with a smile.
But the second goal he described to Dr. Loeb was more momentous – he almost chokes up when he says it out loud. It’s to dance with his daughter, without the use of a cane or a walker, at an upcoming father-daughter dance in February of 2022.
Bill’s pathway to his knee replacements began when he suffered a stress fracture in the Fall of 2020.
There was no trauma. No specific moment where Bill had clearly injured himself. He had finished a routine workday as an exceptional special education teacher at West Gadsden Middle School and when he got up to leave his office, he realized he could only take a few steps before he couldn’t put weight on his legs anymore. At that point, some of Bill’s fellow teachers had to wheel him to his vehicle in a rolling office chair.
After visiting with his primary care physician and consulting with his insurance provider, Bill was referred to Dr. Loeb and North Florida Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center for his stress fracture, but in examining Bill’s leg for his injury, they also found that Bill’s knees were in terrible shape.
“He was horribly bowlegged and had severe arthritis – just about as bad as it gets,” Dr. Loeb says. “Yet he still functioned every day. He went to work, he still taught. He still did the things he wanted to do; he just couldn’t do them very well without a lot of pain.”
Dr. Loeb instructed Bill to stay off his legs as much as possible for three to four months until he was able to have his knee replacement surgeries. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the easiest solution to avoid the pain, so Bill made it work.
Aches and pains in Bill’s knees had burdened him for several months prior to his stress fracture. He had largely been treating his discomfort with over-the-counter medication and needed the assistance of a cane or walker most of the time. At work, he used a wheelchair his wife had previously used. When he went into a retail or grocery store, he often needed a motorized cart to get around.
For almost a year prior to his knee replacement, dealing with the aches and pains in his legs had become part of his day-to-day life. Pain was the status-quo. It was something that over-the-counter medicine just couldn’t help with anymore.
“Our goal in orthopedics is not just about fixing something,” Dr. Loeb says. “It’s about hopefully returning our patients back to a functional lifestyle and improving their lives.”
Bill received his first knee replacement on his left knee in March of 2021, over West Gadsden’s spring break. After a few weeks of healing and rehabilitation, Bill was back in the classroom and able to finish out the remainder of the school year. In June of 2021, as summer break began, Bill received his second knee replacement, this time on his right knee.
Bill says the most uncomfortable part of his surgeries wasn’t even the surgeries themselves, it was the torniquet that was placed on his thigh each time to limit and control bleeding during surgery. Otherwise, Bill said he barely felt a thing from his surgeries, with no major issues at all.
After a few more weeks of rehabilitation following his second surgery, Bill was pain free in both of his knees for the first time in a long time. He was well on his way to meeting the goals he initially set with Dr. Loeb.
It’s something Dr. Loeb loves to see.
“I wish everybody had his attitude. That’s a huge part of it. We can fix a lot of things, but it still takes the patient’s diligence and commitment to getting better to get better,” Dr. Loeb says. “It’s a partnership between the doctor, the patient, therapy – all of those things work together to make a successful outcome.”
TMH aims to discharge patients as soon as possible following total joint replacement surgery. Surgeons and nursing staff believe that patients will have a smoother recovery at home rather than in a hospital room, so many patients are discharged the same day as their surgery and almost all are discharged by 11 am the next morning.
Bill says his physical therapy, as well as the discharge instructions he received from his nurse navigator at TMH, helped his recovery immediately following his surgery.
TMH nurse navigators have the rewarding job of helping patients through their entire surgery process. These specialized nurses help patients understand what to expect from surgery and help them to transition into their life following surgery. They provide patients with specific instructions on how to manage pain and work their way through recovery.
Patients also need a lot of assistance and support from family members, caretakers and friends in the weeks following surgery. Bill gives a lot of credit to his wife, Barbara, for pushing him to routinely complete his physical therapy exercises.
“She was encouraging and she was also a drill sergeant when it came to doing my physical therapy, and I thank her for it,” Bill says. “She was an integral part of my success with my knee replacements. I also had close to 50 people praying for me during both knee replacements and I firmly believe in the power of prayer and God’s impact in that process.”
Bill’s daughter was also crucial in helping his recovery by doing a lot of things that he couldn’t do immediately following his knee replacements – such as fixing his meals, helping him around the house or running errands to the store for him.
“She’s a trooper,” Bill says.
As repayment, she’ll soon get to dance with her dad. Something that didn’t even seem like a possibility a few years ago due to his bad knees.
As the new school year started, and Bill had fully recovered during his summer break, he says several of the students, shocked, exclaimed, “You can walk! Where’s your wheelchair?”
Bill had exchanged his wheelchair for his dancing shoes.
“I couldn’t be any happier. I hope I don’t have any more broken bones but if I do, I’m going to go to Dr. Loeb.”
To learn more about total joint replacement surgery at TMH, visit TMH.ORG/Ortho.
