Pat Taylor

Pat had trouble with her arthritic knees for about twelve years. “Finally, it got to where any walking was extremely painful.” She and her husband used to enjoy traveling to Las Vegas together. On their last trip, “I wanted to get out and walk and see everything. It was just so painful it took the fun out if it. I just felt like there was no hope and I was just going to be that way.” At the time, Pat didn’t realize there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Not long after that trip, Pat met with her surgeon in Fort Worth. He told her he would do knee replacement surgery when she was ready.

Pat didn’t hesitate. “I said, I’m ready!”

She explains, “I didn’t realize that I could have this surgery and have my life back. I just could not believe it.” She had both of her knees replaced at the same time, in March 2008, when she was 65.

Pat remembers her recovery process as remarkable. “I went to a movie within two weeks of coming home from the hospital, and went out to eat twice the first week I was home!” she laughs. Pat’s physical therapist told her he had never seen anyone recover as quickly from knee replacement surgery. “I’m not athletic at all,” Pat says, “so it wasn’t me. It was my knees. I consider my surgeon a miracle man.”

Before her knee replacements, Pat remembers “I used to have dreams that I was in a tennis match or something, just being active, and then wake up thinking ‘oh, I can’t do that.’” Now an active life is not just a dream for Pat. She’s stayed very busy since her recovery, working with her husband and grandson to keep up the mowing on 15 acres and helping on their cattle ranch.

She’s traveling again, now going to Santa Fe instead of Vegas, where she and her husband like to “walk and walk and walk.” And they go fishing whenever they can at their lake house.

“I just go running back and forth. I mean, I can actually run, and I’m 67! So, I’m proud.”

John Taylor (married to Pat Taylor)

Dr. John Taylor is a busy man. He has a 15 exam-room medical practice in Amarillo, Texas. About a 90-minute drive away, he has a 3200 acre cattle ranch. And he’s an avid outdoorsman, enjoying hunting and fishing whenever he can find the time. Needless to say, John is always on the go.

But a couple years ago, John was slowed down by an adverse reaction to an antibiotic, which caused avascular necrosis of the femur head.

He said, “Eventually, I couldn’t get on my tractors. I couldn’t see patients efficiently. I couldn’t build fences. It was just very difficult to perform my daily activities.”

He was aware of an orthopedic surgeon who had helped several of his patients. “He’s published a lot of articles and I knew how qualified he was,” John remembers. The surgeon performed a total Left Hip Replacement for John in June 2008, when John was 65.

“The recovery was extremely simple. I was fine in three weeks,” John says. He completed Medicare home health physical therapy and 15 additional private physical therapy sessions. Since his recovery, John has been impressed with the quality of his new hip.

He tells this story about recently chasing a wild hog, “As I was trying to shoot it, I stepped in a divot and broke my ankle. It was a tremendous twist, but my new hip didn’t dislocate. That’s a miracle in itself.”

John drives a Jeep Wrangler, and was afraid that he would no longer be able to drive a standard shift after his surgery. But he has found that it’s no problem.

“With this technology, it’s amazing. I only expected 50%, but I’m basically 100%. I don’t jog, but I could! I have no pain.”