Description
For many people, arthritis pain slowly takes away the activities they love most. For Dr. Cody Grammer, it became clear it was time for joint replacement when he could no longer walk his dog without pain lasting for days afterward.
As a board-certified, fellowship-trained orthopaedic surgeon at UAMS Health, Dr. Grammer understands joint pain from both sides — as a physician and as a patient. After undergoing two shoulder replacements and a knee replacement himself, he knows firsthand the fear, limitations and emotions patients experience before surgery.
In this video, Dr. Grammer shares his personal journey with arthritis, the non-surgical treatments he tried along the way, and the life-changing freedom he felt after joint replacement surgery.
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Transcript
Arthritis is something that you can often treat non-operatively for a very long time. That can include anti-inflammatory medications, injections and, importantly, physical therapy, especially for knees.
I’ve had two shoulder replacements and a knee replacement in the last five years. My knee replacement was the one I always knew was coming because I hurt it when I was very young and had been told my whole life that I would eventually need a knee replacement. I finally decided to have it done when I couldn’t walk my dog anymore without paying for it the rest of the week. By “paying for it,” I mean I had a hard time standing all day long — which is what I need to do in the operating room — so I had to get that taken care of.
The shoulder replacements were not what I expected. I knew my shoulders hurt, but I didn’t realize how bad they were until I got X-rays. The problem with shoulder arthritis is that it is extremely limiting. Around COVID, I couldn’t really tie a mask behind my head because my shoulder range of motion was so limited.
I had my shoulders replaced by Dr. Wes Cox here at UAMS, and he did a fantastic job. I was sitting on the couch with my wife about an hour after we got home from the same-day surgery, and I looked over at her and said, “My God, I’m free.” That’s what joint replacement is. I didn’t truly understand it until I was sitting in that chair. Patients had been telling me they were free, that they had a new life, that I had given them their life back — but I didn’t really understand what that meant until it was me sitting on the couch having that emotion.
