Finally, after 2 Knee Surgeries on the same Knee, I have found...

On partial knee operations - some last longer before giving out. Mine failed immediately the first time they got me up to walk!

The 1st surgeon sold me the partial telling me I would have a smaller incision/scar, recovery was faster, the bone loss would be less etc. He knew what the failure rate was, I didn't an had no clue.

Cindiwass

What your doc. is telling you is the same thing my 1st surgeon would say to me. Never a direct answer or at least a satisfactory answer. I asked about how many of these he had done and he went on, and on about how he had 32 years of experience.

What I haven't said about that 1st surgery is concerning. It concerned my Hubby and he wishes he would have stopped the surgery when it happened, but he didn't know (he's 84).

Seems, after I was under one of the nurses allegedly found a hole in the instrument package and all the instruments had to be resterilized. Doc. went out and told Hubby this, and that it would take about an hour for instruments to be resterilized. Hubby asked why they didn't use a different set and he was told that these were special instruments for the partial knee operation that came in for just this operation!!!! What kind of practice doesn't have more than one set of instruments?

I was kept in "twilight sleep" all that time and had a hard time coming out of it after they did get me back to my room. I would get up for a moment start to say something to Hubby and then fall back asleep.

As Hubby now says, guess that 32 years of experience didn't include a lot of these partial knee surgeries or the Doc. knew it could fail and it would be another surgery for him (this was in Covid time when all kinds of surgeries were being delayed). We both believe that is why he waited so long to "correct" it, and charged us for it too! He told us when the knee first went out of alignment and I was having excessive bleeding through the bandage, that he didn't make the stitch (?) tight enough!

For the redo, I requested the 1st slot because I just wanted to get it done and be on my way to healing. Surgery was all scheduled for Monday a.m. and on the Saturday afternoon before I get a call from the nurse asking me what time my surgery was on Monday (da, she has the schedule). When I told her at 7 she told me that she was rescheduling me to noon. When I asked why and protested it was too bad so sad. I was ready to cancel I was so upset so Hubby got on phone and nurse tells him that they have to wait for some rep to show up. At that point Hubby tells her to have the Doctor call him.

Doc calls saying he hears we are giving the nurse problems about scheduling and he supposedly has nothing to do with it. Hubby tells him I had specifically asked for this slot after all I had been through and now I am put back 5 hours to wait for some rep....WTH. Doc tells Hubby he doesn't need a rep there to fix my knee. Aparently the rep was coming in for another patient and wanted to watch my knee surgery so I was being rescheduled until AFTER the other patient's operatin!

Hubby and I both, in hindsight, agree we should have cancelled and run like h*ll but I was in pain and we didn't know a whole lot except what I had read on internet.

As I said earlier, my new surgeon was really concerned about why he did what he did to me (you ought to see my scar - what a mess) As he said, 8-9 of 10 partial surgeries will fail resulting in a total TKR, so why did he do a surgery that had such a high failure rate?

Thanks for sharing. Few people are truly meticulous in their dealings. I have learned and am still learning to be as careful as possible, but I think we as human beings have a tendency to believe someone who supposedly is more educated than we are? Right now I'm getting acupuncture to reduce the pain, I've had one treatment so far, I think it is helping, but when I do see a surgeon next time I'm going to ask if he can explain what kind of surgery he is expecting to do - otherwise it's a no-go situation with me. Live and learn. And I've seen like 10 surgeons, none of them convinced me to go ahead with it despite the pain I'm enduring. I know it works with some people, I'm not one of them I guess. So I'll just do the best I can. Thanks for your response, I hope all goes well with you. By the way, I don't know if I mentioned that I was reading a book written by a doctor about internship and his experience and he said the class of interns were told by visiting lawyer/lecturer to NEVER ADMIT A MISTAKE. Hmmm isn't that interesting. Meantime I could not get any answer(s) from my husband's surgeon about what exactly did he do? It was in the middle of night surgery, who knows, maybe he was still waking up...Life is not long enough to figure all this junk out.