Three Women in a Hotel Room (To Say Nothing of the Dog)*
Journalist Jane Earle weaves the story of how a Baby Boomers’ knee put her in the fine company of athletic wunderkinds like Montana, Elway and Kobe…all treated at Steadman Clinic in Vail Valley
A world class luxury ski resort might not be the obvious choice for knee surgery. On the other hand, if that is where the world’s greatest knee surgeon practices, what other venue could be more logical for someone with a knee problem? My thought was, If he’s good enough for Kobe Bryant and Martina Navratilova, shouldn’t he be the one to do my knee?
And that was how I came to make a reservation to spend Thursday night at the Holiday Inn at Vail, Colo., checking into the Vail Valley Medical Center Friday morning for knee surgery under the knife of Dr. Richard Steadman of the clinic of the same name. (I’m not sure he actually uses a knife to make the three tiny slits that are just big enough to accommodate the arthroscope. Maybe just a tiny knife.)
My friend Patterson had agreed to join me for the three days following surgery. I would have to be in Vail until Monday in order to begin Dr. Steadman’s rehabilitation protocol. My grandson was on board to drive me to Vail on Thursday for all the preoperative tests and paper work and return my car to Denver. I thought I was all set.
Then I had a call from my friend Marion. Marion is the kind of friend everyone hopes for: smart, generous, always there to help, good company and competent.
So when she asked me what I was doing over the weekend, I said I was having surgery and described the program. She immediately offered to come along and to see what “coupons” she might have that would work to put us into suitable accommodations.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the merits noted above, Marion lives a somewhat complicated life. She had lived and worked for 10 years in Australia before permanently returning to Denver which is where we met 35 years ago. Marion likes seeing new places and has taken herself and her son around the world at least three times. She had a lot of “coupons,” this time coming in the form of “points” with the Starwood hotel group which happens to own the huge Westin Riverfront Resort and Spa at Avon just up the road from Vail. She was willing to spend a bunch of her points so I could moan in luxury for three days. Oh well. When in Vail…
It was settled; she would pick up Patterson Saturday morning, drive to Vail and the two of them would pick me up at the Steadman Clinic after my physical therapy session. We three would proceed to the Westin. Well, we four. A tiny problem had arisen at the last moment: What to do with Miss Lucky? Now, Miss Lucky, whose given name is Lucky but who earned her sobriquet by being the most elegant Weimaraner in town, had moved from her native Australia to Denver as a one-year-old with Marion and her son Tom who was 10 at the time. Tom, as boys do, had grown up and was now away at college. Given the major trauma she so recently suffered from losing her boy, there was no question of leaving Lucky home.
“Bring her along. We’re all dog lovers,” I said. What could be better for a surgical patient than the soothing presence of a dog? So, on Saturday when Marion pulled up at the Clinic in her white Cadillac, Miss Lucky was in the back seat sitting as close to Patterson as the laws of physics would allow.
“She thinks I’m her mother. It’s the coat,” Patterson said. She was wearing her mink.
Not everybody is up for a weekend with a newly minted surgical patient and all the fetching and carrying and grunts and groans but my friends are an intrepid group. Marion and Patterson were but two of the women who organized themselves to take turns visiting me, fixing my lunch and driving me to therapy for the first days and weeks I was at home after my knee replacement surgery six months earlier. We need to go back two years to understand how I, a person who is generally opposed to elective surgery of any kind, ended up having two knee surgeries in six months.
I was first diagnosed with patella femoral syndrome about six years ago. My knees were just beginning to hurt when I went up and down stairs and I wanted to nip it in the bud. I found a doctor who applied all of the non-surgical treatments available but my condition continued to get worse. Finally, my doctor told me that knee replacement was my only option. I didn’t want to have a knee replacement and I began to look for alternative solutions. That led me to the Steadman Clinic where Dr. Steadman had built up a huge reputation by performing minimally invasive surgery on the knees of world famous athletes and, in most cases, restoring their multi-million dollar careers. This after they had been told by team physicians and trainers that their careers were over. Minimally invasive sounded much better to me than the gruesome descriptions of total knee replacements I had seen.
I made an appointment and consulted Dr. Steadman. He studied my x-rays and examined my knees and said he couldn’t help my left knee because there was too much damage but he thought he could significantly reduce the pain in my right knee. He doesn’t do knee replacements, only repairs. The treatment plan we agreed on was for me to have a total knee replacement in my left knee and to come back to him after that for the repair on my right knee. How I, by now the classic little old lady, and who never had an athletic bone in my body, could have done so much damage to my knee that it couldn’t be fixed while Kobe Bryant’s knee, for example, could be is a medical mystery to me.
My knee replacement surgeon told me I was in the wrong line when knees were passed out. Genetic trumps trauma, I suppose. The replacement surgery was successful and I was making a good recovery. Now I was back for the repair surgery on the right knee.
I took the Holiday Inn van to the medical center Friday morning and checked in at 8 o’clock. A quick spinal block and I was wheeled into surgery. At 10 o’clock the next morning I was released from the hospital and taken downstairs to the Howard Head Sports Medicine Clinic where I met Dr. Steadman and a therapist.
Dr. Steadman looked at the wound and was pleased. His bedside manner is as top notch as his surgery. He smiles, speaks slowly and softly with the slightest remnant of his Texas origins still detectable. His focus is solely on the patient. He is a big man who played football for Bear Bryant at Texas A&M and counts the legendary coach a major influence in his life. He admired Bryant’s intensity and dedication and hated to tell him at the end of his sophomore year that he was leaving football to go to medical school. Gentle this giant my be, but he’s tough and rigid on the subject of rehab. He said my therapy must begin at once, just 24 hours after the surgery, to maintain mobility and motility in the knee joint. The therapist took over and by the end of the session, I could begin to bend my knee.
The Cadillac, when it arrived, was already full with people and friend and equipment for both but Marion managed to fit me, my walker and my perpetual motion machine in and off we went to the Westin. The hotel turned out to be an enormous complex overlooking the Eagle River. When we rolled up to the circular entrance, one of the young doormen was there to unload our considerable luggage onto a cart, bring my walker to me and hold the door open while I went through. Since I had to go back to Howard Head for a second session in about two hours, Marion walked Lucky and went to the Holiday Inn to pick up my bags while Patterson and I went to the room.
That’s when it happened. Patterson and I walked down the hall to our second floor room and Patterson reached out to put her key in the door only to discover it was open. As I approached with my walker, I heard her say, “Do you come with the room?”
It was one of those Colorado moments.
Most of the world has heard about six degrees of separation but in Colorado, and especially among those of us who live in Denver, it’s more like three degrees. Every where one goes, one runs into someone one knows, a neighbor, a friend, the hairdresser, a former husband... Standing in our room was Bill, a developer from Denver whom we all knew. He was with a Westin agent who was showing him the room for possible purchase. After the usual catching up, the conversation devolved into a real estate discussion, he and Patterson both being more or less in the business. Before he left with the agent he asked us to give him a review of our experience in the room as he considered whether to purchase the one-room condo.
I propped my leg up for a brief rest until Marion returned to take me back to the Clinic for my second physical therapy treatment. By now, my pain had diminished to a level easily tolerated and the second treatment left me only a little tired After our return from the clinic, I climbed onto the bed, strapped my leg into the dreaded machine, plopped a bag of frozen peas on top of my knee and relaxed while the unpacking went forward.
Just before leaving our respective houses, each of us had thrown food from our refrigerators and cupboards into a bag. Patterson, careful planner that she is, had wine in one of her bags. We spread our feast on the coffee table, filled the wine glasses from the room’s wall kitchenette and settled in for the evening.
Marion decided that she and I would sleep on the king sized bed because that would leave enough room for the infernal machine. Patterson slept on the fold-out divan. Lucky brought her own bed with her and settled down on it between Marion and Patterson. I had taken two Tylenol before my second PT session and was comfortable propped up to read my book, my leg moving slowly back and forth in the machine, peas on my knee. The machine is mercifully silent and as we all drifted off into slumber the still of the mountain night was broken only by the stentorious snores of Lucky. She was so happy to be with us.
Sunday I had to go back to the Howard Head Clinic twice for my treatments. Marion took me there while Patterson went downstairs at the hotel to be briefed on what properties were included in the sale that was going on at the Westin. As a real estate agent, she carries around a list of prospective buyers in her head who might very well be interested in a condo in Avon. Marion and Patterson picked me up after my treatment and the three of us had lunch in Vail. In the afternoon, they returned to the hotel where Marion was briefed on the time shares available at Starwood properties around the world while I once more submitted to the ministrations of the staff at Howard Head Clinic.
Some people find it peculiar that I don’t mind the physical therapy that comes with knee surgery. Physical therapy, which science we now have because of the advances in sports medicine over the past few decades, is a career that appeals to young people, I find. Nearly all the therapists at Howard Head are young, fit and attractive. They have all been well trained in the art of conversation. The theory may be that if the therapist can get the patient talking about something of interest, she won’t notice what the therapist is doing. But whatever, the rationale, I found all the therapists who worked on me pleasant and charming and remarkably consistent. The program didn’t vary in the slightest during the three days I attended the clinic. That inflexible discipline reflects Dr. Steadman’s belief in the importance of rehabilitation in restoring a damaged knee to full use.
“A lot of people believe in the surgery; I believe in the rehabilitation,” Steadman told Charlie Rose in a 2008 interview. Steadman performs what he calls microfracture surgery in an effort to get the body to heal itself. New cartilage will form to replace missing or damaged cartilage, he says. He does not make use of stem cell treatments but has studied the subject and believes more work needs to be done in the development of a “guidance system,” so the body will produce new tissue where it is needed. John Elway, Joe Montana and Monica Salas are among the many athletes he has treated and who have returned to their careers. Steadman believes the reason athletes recover so well is in their heads. “They have a mental ability to concentrate; they can envision what they are doing with their bodies,” he told Charlie Rose.
I returned to the clinic Monday morning for my final session and was glad to leave my leg machine there. We rode back to Denver with my walker in the trunk and Lucky sitting on Patterson’s lap. I got the afternoon off for travel but I had to report to Active Motion in Denver on Tuesday where I would continue my therapy. I requested Kurt who had put me through my knee replacement therapy and delivered to him Dr. Steadman’s protocol. I returned to Active Motion the next three days. The week following, with Dr. Steadman’s permission, I cut back to three days a week because I was progressing so well.
Six weeks after the surgery, I returned to Vail and Dr. Steadman was pleased with my progress. He said I would need only two more weeks of therapy, one day each week, and then I could continue my exercises at home. I have very little pain left in my knee and I expect most of that to disappear over the next few months. Even though I have said that Kobe and I were on the same rehab program, it’s only true for the first weeks. After all, Kurt wasn’t getting me ready to go back onto the court.
*With apologies to Jerome K. Jerome, author of Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog).
