My left knee was replaced with a titanium and plastic model 15 years ago. This due to an auto accident that destroyed it ten years prior to that. They pasted the real knee together well enough to get by on but it wore out in 1988. Thus the metal knee.
Before that auto accident I was just getting into ski touring and backcountry camping on X-C skiis. But my legs were so trashed that I had to give it up. There really wasn't a whole lot of opportunity for X-C skiing in San Diego, Calif. anyway.
We moved here in '08 and I asked Jim Hall, a knee doc at The Center, whether I could risk X-C skiing. "No," he said after looking at the X-rays.
But Ted Shoenborn and Bob Woodward here in Bend told me that they know folk with artificial knees who X-C ski, so I figured I'd get another opinion. My doc referred me to Mike Ryan, at Desert Orthopedics, but Ryan only knows real knees, not artificial knees. The people over there said that Erin Finter was who I wanted to see. She skis and knows from knee replacements.
So I saw her this morning. They took new pictures, she looked at the new pictures. "Complicated knee replacement here," she said. Yeah, this was not your garden-variety knee replacement. There is a metal shaft going about a foot up the inside of the femur and all the baling wire they wrapped around my splintered femur to hold it together while it was healing is clearly visible.
She pointed out these and other interesting features. The plastic bearing surface shows sign of wearing out, gonna need to take another look in a couple years.
"Enjoy cross-country skiing," she said. Shook my hand, sent me on my way.
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