Knee and wrist stem cell procedures help a patient’s return to skiing
Dear Mitch,
Yes, These photos REALLY ARE of me — snow flying over my head, a mouthful of snow on every 2nd turn, and having to wipe the snow off my goggles on every 3rd to 4th turn—all made possible again thanks to the stem cell procedures you performed on my left knee and wrist! The snow was new, heavy, and varied from knee to chest deep, making the skiing very hard on the knees, but my left knee held up beautifully, all week long.
When we joined your family in Vail three weeks ago, it was the first time I skied at a resort in 7 or 8 years. I had given up resort skiing, in favor of only heli-skiing (in powder snow) because my left knee could not tolerate the edging required on the hard packed and artificial snow found at resorts. In the last few years it looked as if I would also have to give up heli-skiing because my knee would swell up like a balloon by the end of the 3rd or 4th day, even in the powder.
I had resigned myself to the fact that I could never again ski moguls, because of my knee. Not only did my knee tolerate edging on Vail’s hard packed, icy catwalks and lower altitude artificial snow, but I actually skied virtually every one of Vail’s famous mogul runs (except Highline and Roger’s).
As you know, for the last five years I have had to wear a wrist brace to ski, bike, weight lift and to sleep at night. I had gone to New York to see the best wrist and hand specialist in the country, and other than suggesting a cortisone shot every six months, he concurred with my previous diagnoses, that my only solution to relieve the pain was to fuse the wrist, which I have been putting off, because I haven’t been willing to give up my little remaining wrist movement.
My wrist pain at the end of many normal, business days was getting to the point that I was considering moving forward with the fusion, until your stem cell procedure. Since the procedure the wrist pain has subsided substantially, to the point where I forgot to wear my wrist brace to bed numerous times, and I actually forgot to wear it for a day of skiing at Vail, and didn’t even realize it until I undressed at the end of the ski day.
I am writing this as I am returning from a week long of heli-ski trip where I skied 134,000 vertical feet in just five days (we missed a day of skiing because weather delayed our arrival, and I sat out a day because my RIGHT knee was in significant pain), that varied from very deep, heavy, wet, new snow; to perfect powder; to tricky wind blown snow; to breakable sun crust; and to dense, settled snow in the trees and at the valley bottoms; to long traverses in tracked up snow—lots of challenging variety—and instead of my usual return home, limping, with my left knee highly swollen and in a tight wrap, and my wrist in my brace, I have only some very minor discomfort in my left knee (probably not more than what anyone’s healthy knee might feel like after this trip), and virtually no discomfort in my wrist.
Mitch, I can’t thank you enough for this miracle of giving me the gift of being able to really ski again –I only have one question/request—how soon can you do my RIGHT knee??
With a HUGE bow of appreciation,
Bob