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I’ve always been very active with athletics and working out, and I played tennis here in town on the leagues for about fifteen years, and then my knees started to bother me. I was also training for an amateur bodybuilding competition. I started doing that about two or three years ago. I kind of hurt my knee a little more, and I just got to where I couldn’t do the exercises. Then it got to where it hurt to walk. It was very painful going up and down steps, so I came in to see Dr. Crovetti.
I had heard he was the best in town for knee joint surgeries, and first, it said I had torn meniscus. We tried that, both surgeries on both knees, and it just didn’t seem to keep getting better. We found that I didn’t have any cartilage in my knees, and so it was deciding on how bad or how long I could live with the pain. For myself, always being very active, it was very hard for me because I was always used to going to work out or going hiking, or playing tennis, or you know, playing all of this stuff. It got to where I couldn’t do these things, so I tried to do some exercises at home, trying not to gain weight and keep in shape. It really struck me when I was doing these exercises, and I had to do the modified versions that you normally think of older people or something. That really was kind of a blow to my esteem. I guess as a kind of having to do exercises in the modified version and another thing that really happened that made me decide I really got to do something different. Another thing was that I was helping my father after a heart procedure, and we were staying at my sister’s. We had to go up some stairs, and he’s ninety-two years old, and he actually had a hip replacement a few years ago. He went right up the steps. I was behind him, going slow. I had to hold onto the wall, the railing, and just like, oh my gosh, my ninety-two-year-old dad is a lot more active than I am.
So, we met with Dr. Crovetti again, and we decided to go ahead with the knee replacements. I had two; we did them six weeks apart. It was hard, but I stuck with it, and it’s just amazing the difference. I walk now all the time. With stairs, I’m not having to hold onto the railings, and it’s just quite a bit of a difference. I’m starting to pick up pickleball now. I can go back to working out in the weight room, and I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had to continue living like I was before.