Leisa's Orthopedic Story
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You like to camp. That's our favorite thing to do is just to run with people that we've known since we were like fifteen, sixteen years old. I started out as an x-ray tech and worked my way up, and I finally landed in MRIs when MRIs at Baptist Health were first started. Not all patients walk in, lay on a table, and lay down, get up and go. They either come in in a wheel chair or they come in on a stretcher where you have to pull and tug them off the stretcher onto the table. You start doing that year after year, that takes its wear and tear on your joints. So in my late 50s, it really started to pop and crack when I could not dress myself anymore.
And when I had broke the third coffee cup out of the micro wave trying to get it in and out that I said this is it. I can't do this anymore. And I finally reached out to Doctor Abeln because his name was the one that kept coming up that patients seemed to like and seemed to have the best results with.
I try and first listen, what are we trying to get back to? It helps me understand perhaps how aggressive to be in offering treatments. It doesn't always have to be surgical. If some of the gains are really mild, we can offer non surgical care.
If there's a bigger problem and the goals are higher, then yes, surgery might be the best option. So Leisa had suffered initially from some soft tissue damage to her shoulder and required work to address that from a minimally invasive standpoint.
The first surgery was rotator cuff. I think I just thought I was too young to have a shoulder replacement because I was still only in my 50s.
As our joints age, other problems can come into focus. I like to look at patients imaging with them. I'll show them their x-ray, I'll show them the MRI and explain well hey this is how it should look.
The reverse shoulder replacement was the easiest, best decision I ever made.
Reverse shoulder replacement has been frankly a game changer for shoulder replacement and really expanded our ability to help patients with shoulder pain. The reason it gets the name reversed is because we essentially put the implants in backwards. Our shoulder essentially has a ball on one side and a socket on the other during the surgery. Similar to a standard shoulder replacement, we remove a small piece of the patient's bone, but the implants are then put in so that after surgery, the ball is now where the socket was and vice versa. And so that better stabilizes the joint and essentially helps us replace the function of the rotator cuff.
Leisa's very motivated. Wants to get better tomorrow and those are the best patients to work with who have a defined goal. I like to work along with them to meet those goals and I hate that they're not meeting them when they come see me and trust us with our ability to them back to that.
Within weeks there were things that I could see, the motion that I could do with my arm that I hadn't been able to do before, and even my physical therapist said they couldn't believe the motion that I had back so quick, so easily.
The body is a machine that is meant to move. And so if we aren't, we see downsides to that. And so fortunately musculoskeletal care can help us kind of keep the machine running.
I am a hugger so not being able to hug that was was really important to me. So it meant the world to me when I could hug again. Not only am I able to hug, but I'm able to be, I feel like I'm able to be more independent. Because I've had good results, I would like to share that with somebody and tell them, Okay, I've been down this road. I've had good results.
And please go down this road. Have these good results. Choose Baptist Health Floyd Orthopedics. Thanks to Doctor Abeln, I'm off to Greece and Italy.
And when I had broke the third coffee cup out of the micro wave trying to get it in and out that I said this is it. I can't do this anymore. And I finally reached out to Doctor Abeln because his name was the one that kept coming up that patients seemed to like and seemed to have the best results with.
I try and first listen, what are we trying to get back to? It helps me understand perhaps how aggressive to be in offering treatments. It doesn't always have to be surgical. If some of the gains are really mild, we can offer non surgical care.
If there's a bigger problem and the goals are higher, then yes, surgery might be the best option. So Leisa had suffered initially from some soft tissue damage to her shoulder and required work to address that from a minimally invasive standpoint.
The first surgery was rotator cuff. I think I just thought I was too young to have a shoulder replacement because I was still only in my 50s.
As our joints age, other problems can come into focus. I like to look at patients imaging with them. I'll show them their x-ray, I'll show them the MRI and explain well hey this is how it should look.
The reverse shoulder replacement was the easiest, best decision I ever made.
Reverse shoulder replacement has been frankly a game changer for shoulder replacement and really expanded our ability to help patients with shoulder pain. The reason it gets the name reversed is because we essentially put the implants in backwards. Our shoulder essentially has a ball on one side and a socket on the other during the surgery. Similar to a standard shoulder replacement, we remove a small piece of the patient's bone, but the implants are then put in so that after surgery, the ball is now where the socket was and vice versa. And so that better stabilizes the joint and essentially helps us replace the function of the rotator cuff.
Leisa's very motivated. Wants to get better tomorrow and those are the best patients to work with who have a defined goal. I like to work along with them to meet those goals and I hate that they're not meeting them when they come see me and trust us with our ability to them back to that.
Within weeks there were things that I could see, the motion that I could do with my arm that I hadn't been able to do before, and even my physical therapist said they couldn't believe the motion that I had back so quick, so easily.
The body is a machine that is meant to move. And so if we aren't, we see downsides to that. And so fortunately musculoskeletal care can help us kind of keep the machine running.
I am a hugger so not being able to hug that was was really important to me. So it meant the world to me when I could hug again. Not only am I able to hug, but I'm able to be, I feel like I'm able to be more independent. Because I've had good results, I would like to share that with somebody and tell them, Okay, I've been down this road. I've had good results.
And please go down this road. Have these good results. Choose Baptist Health Floyd Orthopedics. Thanks to Doctor Abeln, I'm off to Greece and Italy.