You, Too, Can Have A Bionic Body
I’ll take one.
Written by GussSusan Burke’s left knee was humbling her. At 54, she wanted to hike and whitewater raft through the national parks or, at the very least, to stroll around the block with her husband at night, as she’d always done. Instead, she could barely walk from her desk to her office parking lot without popping an Aleve. Her knee wouldn’t leave her alone. Four years earlier, it had started swelling while she was training for an eight-mile trek through Glacier National Park. “I finally decided, ‘All right, I’ll get it checked’,” she says. “The cartilage had worn down to the point of bone on bone.” Burke’s doctor told her she needed a knee replacement, but that wasn’t what she wanted. It was too drastic, and she thought she was too young.
Over the next four years, Burke tried to salvage her knee with arthroscopic surgery, pain meds and lowered expectations for hikes that were “shorter than my usual horizons.” But her knee was still crumbling. Finally, she met a fellow adventurer on a plane who had just had both knees replaced. He had a temporary cane, but he was young, in his 50s, and he seemed happy. Suddenly the idea of becoming bionic didn’t sound so bad. “I thought, ‘Geez Louise, maybe I should do something like that’,” she says. In July, she did; her new right knee is made of plastic and metal. If you happen to be sitting next to her on a plane, she’ll tell you that she has only one complaint: it’s annoying to go through the airport metal detector.Knee and hip replacements are serious surgeries, but increasingly, they’re also a serious business. As the baby boomers’ joints wear out, more of them are turning to orthopedic surgeons for the procedures. Docs now perform more than 450,000 knee replacements and 208,000 hip replacements a year, and rising numbers of them are done to boomers willing and able to pay $30,000 and up. By 2031, one study predicts, docs will perform more than 3.5 million knee replacements alone—a 673 percent increase from current numbers. It’s as if an entire generation has taken Matthew 18:8 to heart: “If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee.” And, apparently, sub in something better and keep going.
~J~ Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 5:53 amVisit ~J~
I could use a knee replacement at least on my left knee, which is the worst. It’s been operated on twice to remove torn cartilage, I can’t walk well for long or climb stairs very often etc, but I don’t want anymore operations. The last operation I had darn near killed me and that was a hysterectomy.
I got down on the floor at the vet’s office the other day and my husband told the vet we’d need a crane to get me back up. He meant because once I get down my knees won’t help me back up, but because I’m pleasingly plump I got a bit aggravated with him. If he had said it to me I would have laughed, but to the athletic vet?
Sue suggested just last night I might get a knee replacement but everything else has been removed or cut on so I’ll keep my bone on bone knees, thank you.