Before Mary’s Regenexx® Procedure
At age 15, Mary Thomas had meniscus surgery on her right knee. Ten years later, she had surgery again.
“It was horrible,” she recalls. “I had a cast from my ankle up the side, straight leg.”
“I vowed I would spend my life in a wheelchair before I would have surgery again.”
She reconsidered that vow after she retired from teaching in 2004. During the next decade, bone-on-bone arthritis in her knee made every activity more and more painful.
“I used to walk 2.5 miles a day and do yoga dance and social dance,” she says. “But the arthritis really attacked my knee until I could not keep up with others anymore when walking, especially if the ground was not flat.” Eventually, she had to park in handicapped spaces.
“I used my arms to get up out of a chair and I would stand and stretch a bit before I could walk,” she says. “I would hear myself constantly complaining ‘oh my knee, oh my knee.’”
Synvisc injections helped ease the pain for several years—until Mary had a bad reaction to the drug. “I got quite ill and swollen with a high fever,” she remembers. “My doctor said once I had this reaction I would likely have another. I felt I was backed into a corner.”
She scheduled total knee replacement surgery three times, only to cancel when a life-changing event required her focus. Then she saw a promotion for a community education seminar about Regenexx® Procedures, presented by Regenerative and Performance Specialists.
“I took a friend with me to the seminar. We both thought it was too good to be true,” she says.
Mary asked an employee at her orthopedic surgeon’s office about stem cell treatments and was told “‘we do not believe in that.’ So I talked to my primary care physician and she said, ‘Mary, go for it!’”
She scheduled a consultation with Jesse Sally, D.O.
After Mary’s Regenexx® Procedure
Mary had the procedure July 2015 and felt relief quickly.
“I was surprised at how little pain I had when the bone marrow was harvested. It really was not bad at all,” she says. “I was also surprised that the injection treatments worked!”
Mary had been concerned that her two prior knee surgeries and her age would make her a poor candidate for Regenexx® Procedures.
“Also, I was recently told I have a very low platelet count—so I would not be eligible for surgery after all because I would be such a bleeder,” she says. “I was worried that that would be a problem for my eligibility, but it was not.”
“And I just could not be happier with the professionalism of the doctors,” she adds.
Mary is so satisfied with her results she plans to have her left knee treated in the future.
