Pam Peterson

I walked in with a cane. I'd tried exercising my way out of a bad right knee, then I'd tried injections. But I was increasingly immobile and in pain. Dr. Della Valle took the full time to make a careful diagnosis and explain the procedure of a total knee replacement. He said candidly "Joint surgeons say that a hip replacement is 50% surgery and 50% rehab, but a knee replacement is more like 10% surgery and 90% rehab. In other words, we can give you a functioning joint, but you have to commit to doing all of the rehabilitation work." It gave me a lot of confidence that he was so honest. Anyway, here it is almost 3 years later. Starting about a year and a half ago, I ditched the elliptical machine for my cardio exercise and started trying to reconstruct every tap dance step I ever learned. Yesterday, at the gym, my trainer and I spent almost a third of the hour tapping our [censored] off to Oscar Peterson, the Clayton Brothers, and Alpha Blondy (Cote d'Ivoire Reggae singer)!!! That's MY story!! (And I threw the cane away on the one-year anniversary of my surgery.)