Partial Knee Replacement Surgery Patient Video Transcription

My name is Paul. I lived in New York City my whole life, lived in Queens, retired New York City fireman. I had, over my years of my career, I had a couple of knee surgeries, and over the time, my meniscus was repaired a few times, and the cartilage had disintegrated. And I was experiencing, for about five or six years, a lot of pain, and I’ve gone to other doctors, and they always said that, you know, you’ll have to have total knee replacement, eventually, and I was fighting that tooth and nail. I overheard, through another doctor about a partial knee replacement, and I did some research, met with Dr. Buechel, with my wife and I. He explained what he was gonna do, his procedures. He explained how the recovery would go, and he answered all my questions, my wife’s questions, about, you know, what it was gonna take. And we were confident, and I decided to go with Dr. Buechel and do the surgery.

Dr. Buechel formed a partial knee replacement on my left knee. I had bone on bone on that knee. It was very painful. He explained that it was going to be through robotics and explained the whole procedure, and he just gave me so much confidence in how precise the procedure would be, and it would greatly reduce the pain I was experiencing, and I wouldn’t have any complications from it.

I probably went into the hospital at 8 o’clock that morning, the surgery was about 11, and I was walking out of the hospital by 8 o’clock that night. He had wanted me to just do the ice machine. He wanted me to take Advil and Tylenol for pain. He did give me some other stuff, more potent, I took maybe one or two of them for the entire procedure since the day of the surgery. I didn’t have…most of the time, I didn’t need it. I’m fine now. It’s been a little over three weeks. I don’t take any Advil or any Tylenol now. They gave me a walker to walk to the car, and that was it for the walker. The next day, I used the cane for one day. The following Monday or Tuesday, I had the therapist, and they were explaining to me what they were gonna do, about…teach me how to walk and use a cane. They were so impressed that I was just walking. I walked in and walked out, no problem.

My surgery was on a Thursday. Election Day was, you know, four days later. I voted. I walked into the school, and I saw a man sitting on the bench, and his whole leg was opened up. He had that long scar down the front kneecap. I asked him, you know, “When did you have that done?” and he said, “About six weeks ago, seven weeks ago.” And he asked me, I said, “I had it four days ago.” And he was like, shocked, like, “You had it four days, and you’re walking?” And I said, “Yeah.” He was…he was shocked, and he said he wished he knew that he could do a partial. And I was like, I feel great. So at that moment, I knew I made the right choice.