- February 02, 2017
Hi, my name is Timothy Epting. I’m a foot and Ankle orthopedic specialist here at Florida Orthopaedic Institute Out of residency I served in the Navy as an orthopedic surgeon for three years in Jacksonville, Florida. One of those years of which I deployed to Afghanistan served in our special forces in Afghanistan and country. So I treated a number of complex botanical problems. Oftentimes we try to start with non-surgical measures, which may be a brace or an insert device that may help an injury to heal or to help control pain or problem that they may have. And those don’t succeed. We will even utilize physical therapy and in some cases, if all those fail or if it’s in a condition that non-surgical measures won’t help. And sometimes we think about surgical correction. My philosophy is I like patients to understand what their problem is, not just their pain, but why are they having it and where it came from so that they understand why we’re doing what we’re doing to help make them better.
Dr. Epting Has been great. He’s very, very methodical in his approach, a great bedside manner. About a year and a half ago I was having some problems after a traumatic injury to my ankle started to notice some pain and swelling again. So when I met with Dr. Epting, He walked through a very comprehensive treatment plan which included going in and taking out the old hardware that I had from the previous injury. The next phase to that, which occurred about six months ago was he worked a fused my ankle, which I was pretty nervous about. But the surgery was a success. So it’s been a very slow progress or a very slow process, I should say in terms of getting things back going again. But now I typically walk, I’m able to use an exercise bike, which I have at home. So I’ve been able to get on that.
I use that, quite frankly, frequently my pain has gone on. I began to kind of ramp up my physical activity, you know, over the last several months. You recommended some physical therapy, which I’m going through now. I go twice a week at one of your locations. It’s been really, really successful. And the pain, as I mentioned, is gone become more and more active every single day. I mean, one of the big things that I brought back from being away from family for a year in Afghanistan was helping to prioritize things in my life. Having a good work-home balance and also realizing, you know, some of the things that we do to help patients that may seem minor, but they make a big difference on whether it may seem small, they can make a big difference in the long run.
