This is thirty three years I've been a nurse. I've been doing oncology for the last twenty eight years, being their advocate, being there for them, doing whatever I can to help them. Met my husband nineteen years ago on a blind date.
We sat across the room for four or five hours and then we were sitting together and her thumb grazed my hand and then she just latched onto my hand and it was was there.
My mom has terrible arthritis. I don't want to be like my mom and she's always in pain, always. I had a knee pain for a really long time. Probably the last ten years have been really bad. You get depressed, you know, you get tired of hurting all the time. When I get up from sitting at the computer, I'd have to stand there for a minute for the pain to settle in before I could take a step.
It was like a struggle seeing her do her everyday things.
I actually walked one of my dogs and I was having to tiptoe kind of because it was hurting so bad and I was like I'm done. I just can't do this anymore. I'm ready to have surgery.
Doctor Compton had told me I would know when I was ready.
When Pam came in she was having a hard time getting through the day. Those are the things that kind stand out to you saying how can we help this person have a very quality of life throughout the day even something simply is going to work each and every day. My overall philosophy on patient care is to try and make people better in the kind of least invasive way possible. If we can get you better with some simple therapies, medications, treatments, or just a tincture of time, we'll do that. If we need to be a little bit more aggressive with something like injections or surgeries, we'll do that.
I had the surgery February sixteenth, best decision ever made in my life because my pain is gone. I think I went into surgery at nine, I was home at one.
Ultimately knee replacement is basically cutting the end of the bone off on both sides on the tibia and the femur, basically putting a metal cap on the end of those bones, and then we kind of resurface the patella with a little piece of plastic. So a piece of plastic goes between those metal pieces. The first little bit there is pain, there's pain involved. But that pain is different, that pain is recovery pain, that pain is part of the therapy process.
I did my physical therapy like I was supposed to. Went twice a week to physical therapy and did my exercises twice a day at home and I was back to work in six weeks.
Really once you've got through that recovery process now your knee is replaced. Know people always ask oh is arthritis back? The arthritis can't come back. With today's technology that knee should be kind of eliminated from Pam's problems. She shouldn't have to worry about it ever again.
We love NASCAR but my husband thinks we have to get there from the time the gate opens and stay till the gate closes.
Her knees would really bother going up and down the steps.
Thinking about going down a flight of stairs would scare me because I wouldn't know if my knee would give out on me or not. And now, I don't worry about that at all.
I'm just more confident.
When you get to see the people before the surgery and the struggle they have, then see them months later so pleased with the fact they can do things they hadn't done in years, that's ultimately what makes you smile at the end of the day, that you're able to make that difference in people's lives.
Doctor Compton was great. I think he's a great surgeon.
He's gonna do my next knee. Just being able to move and know I'm not gonna hurt, that's amazing.
