photograph courtesy everett collection / dreamstime
Teenagers have an impulsiveness all their own, as anyone who’s been or raised an adolescent knows. Take Wesley LaRue, whose middle and high school years were marked by an athleticism which, in hindsight, makes her wince a little. “I was competitive in cheerleading at Germantown High School,” she says, “and when I think about the things we used to do, they were just stupid, right? I mean, like, literally jumping up and landing on our knees! I look back on it now and think, ‘God, what were we thinking?’ But you know, we were young — it was the ’80s! And once you got bruised the first time and it healed, it didn’t bother you that much.”
photograph courtesy LaRue family
Wesley LeRue with son and husband.
LaRue’s taste for athletics also led her to take high school gymnastics; later, as an adult, she pursued outdoor sports. “I hiked and kayaked and mountain biked through grad school, and worked with personal trainers through the years,” she recalls. “I even tried to be a runner for a while, and I was definitely not made for that. On top of that, I also have rheumatoid arthritis.”
And yet, making the best of that chronic condition, LaRue stayed active beyond her forties, sometimes pushing through the joint pain she felt. That is, until the day her rugged pursuit of the great outdoors forced her to confront both her high school daring and her own limitations. “I guess I just had a lot of wear and tear on my joints,” she says. “By 2020, I was having pain in my right hip and my left knee.” Thinking back on it now, she admits her reluctance to see an orthopedic specialist cost her valuable time. “What I learned from all that,” she says, “was not to wait.”
photograph courtesy orthosouth
Dr. Claiborne “Chip” Christian.
It’s a lesson she takes to heart now, having first tried the grin-and-bear-it approach. “I work at the University of Memphis, and it got to where walking across campus was difficult,” she says. “If I had to sit in a meeting for any amount of time, when I stood up the pain really took my breath away. It would take me a minute to be able to walk after standing. But I’m stubborn, and I have a pretty high pain tolerance, so I let it go on. By the time something bothers me enough to be seen, it’s pretty extreme. When I finally got it checked out, my right hip joint was pretty much gone. If I had gone earlier, they might have been able to preserve that joint for a little bit longer.”
After a year or so, LaRue finally made an appointment. “I went into Campbell Clinic and saw Dr. David Bernholt, who said, ‘We can try some different things with your knee. After seeing the X-rays, your hip is pretty much done and you’re going to need to see a surgeon.’”
Meanwhile, her knee could wait. “They do try to preserve your joint before they operate,” LaRue says, “and they tried that with my knee. Cortisone injections, gel injections — they tried all that.” As those treatments went on, Dr. Marcus Ford performed her hip replacement surgery in February 2022, and LaRue was delighted with the results. “It was a walk in the park,” she says. “It was a very easy recovery. I was off work three weeks full-time, and then part-time for a couple of weeks, and then I was back at work.”
photograph courtesy everett collection / dreamstime
LaRue’s experience is a testament to how far orthopedic medicine has come in recent decades, and how much hip replacement surgery has evolved since being pioneered in the 1960s. To better understand the state of the art in orthopedics today, I spoke with Dr. Claiborne “Chip” Christian, an OrthoSouth specialist in general orthopedics and sports medicine. Judging from his words, if no other treatment works, there’s never been a better time to have any orthopedic work done, whether you’re repairing or replacing joints.
“I have been doing this now for 30 years,” Christian says, “and over that time there have been tremendous advancements in all the sub-specialties of orthopedics, whether it be hand surgery or foot surgery or joint replacement or sports medicine.” A key development in surgical techniques, he says, was the adoption of the magnifying visual sensor known as the arthroscope, “a small lighted telescope that we use through small incisions.”
Operating through only a small opening can make all the difference in shortening a patient’s recovery time. “When I started my training, for example, all of our rotator cuff repairs were done with a big incision. It took people longer to get over it, and it was more painful on the front end. And now with arthroscopy, almost all those surgeries are outpatient and the rehab, while still difficult, is a lot easier than it was 20 or 30 years ago.”
photograph courtesy everett collection / dreamstime
If that seems like the stuff of science fiction, so are the materials used in the process. As Christian explains, “the implants that we use now — the sutures and the square screws and all that sort of thing — are bio-absorbable. In other words, the body turns them into bone over time, whereas 15 to 20 years ago, we still had to use metal implants. There’s no metal used now and that’s a big advancement.”
In addition to such advances in techniques and materials, so too has the art of recovery evolved. “Rehabilitation is so much better now than it was,” says Christian. “When I first started, someone who received an ACL reconstruction would be in a splint or cast for several weeks. Now we start range of motion, weight bearing, and strength training almost immediately. Because the sooner we start using a joint the way it was designed to be used, the better the surgery turns out.”
LaRue had the good fortune to focus on such rehabilitation more than most. “I was working from home more,” she says. “That helped tremendously. I wasn’t walking back and forth across the campus, right? I did as much as I could, but if I needed to rest, I could rest.”
illustration courtesy matthieu c. louis / dreamstime
And yet there was still the problem of her knee. After it did not respond to the gel injections and other therapies as hoped, replacement surgery was recommended for that joint as well. But this time, yet another advance in surgical techniques would help. “I was part of a research project during the second surgery, my knee surgery, and that was a really cool experience,” she says. “They were looking at a medication to reduce blood loss. Less blood loss during surgery is associated with less pain afterwards and a faster recovery. And I didn’t know if what I took was a placebo or the actual medication. It was a blind trial.”
Ford told Larue that surgery on the knee was a lot harder on the patient and not to expect the recovery to be as easy as her hip, and to a certain extent that was true. “It was a longer recovery,” she says. “I think I was out maybe five weeks full-time and then another six weeks part-time. But I had my knee surgery on March 17. And on Memorial Day weekend, I did a two-mile hike on an off-road path along the river.”
“I just learned a few weeks ago that I was actually on the new medication during the trial,” she continues. “I was kind of hoping that I wouldn’t have been on it — that I was just that badass on my own! But it turns out I did have the medication.”
The whole experience has left LaRue appreciating how many specialists cross paths with a patient, and how seamlessly they work together. “I think part of my recovery, too,” she adds, “was that I did the physical therapy at Campbell Clinic. And for both surgeries I had excellent physical therapists.”
That’s a point that Christian underscores as well. “The whole sports medicine thing,” he says, “whether it’s whether it’s from us at OrthoSouth, or from Campbell Clinic or OrthoOne, is a team effort. Honestly, it starts with our families. They have to be supportive. And then we have a group of people behind us, our medical assistants and people at the front desk. We have a whole supportive team behind us.”
illustration courtesy matthieu c. louis / dreamstime
Advances in surgical techniques and materials — in this case, an artificial hip socket — have great reduced recovery rates from orthopedic surgeries.
And part of that team, he stresses, includes those who are working with student-athletes in the region, to focus on avoiding injuries in the first place — a type of outreach in which Campbell Clinic also engages. “One of the major advances that I’ve seen in my 30 years is that we’re now much more proactive,” says Christian. “We know more now about how to prevent injuries rather than just picking up the pieces afterwards.”
That would have been very welcome to young Wesley LaRue when she was sticking landings on her beleaguered knees, back in the day. And yet LaRue’s rather pleased with how things turned out, all in all. Less than a year after her knee replacement, and more than a year past her hip replacement, she’s already resuming that embrace of the great outdoors that she’s always loved. And she’s not alone out there.
“I have a young son,” she says. “We love to ride our bikes, and then go for walks. And that was a lot of my motivation for seeing these surgeries through. I wanted to be able to keep up with him.” She pauses for a moment, then laughs and adds, “There’s no chance of that! But at least I can keep him in sight.”
