- July 19, 2018
My name is Michael Aigner and I worked for the Tampa Bay Lightning. I was going to work. I started riding my bike and there was road construction on 574. I wasn’t aware of how to get my bike through the construction because it had changed. I didn’t realize the sidewalk concrete and the asphalt and had not been meeting. They had not leveled it, so when I tried turning my bike, I fell over on my right side and busted my existing hip replacement and also busted my femur at the same time. Their head radiologist, he took the pictures and I asked him, what does it look like and he says, well, he says, I’ve seen a lot of hip replacement. he says but his one looks bad. It’s bad. The original hip replacement had to be removed. You had put new surfaces into it, had the longest shaft for the femur, as well as the hip replacement ball and reverse socket, had to be replaced and being such. It was a spiral fracture from my hip all the way down to above my knee
During surgery, we were successfully able to remove the component that was in there. And then we had to repair the bone with probably about 10 cables to noose around the bone. And then we put the new stem in, which was a long stem, essentially went from his hip almost to the level of his knee.
After the surgery, I was asked to go to Dr. Miranda’s office. Pretty much told me that I can’t be on my, on my feet or I mean put any pressure on that leg for six weeks. Which is tough for anybody stuck in a bed, you know, you can’t do anything for yourself. And eventually, it was after six weeks I was able to get out of there.
He came in for his six, about six-month post-op visit. And again, the same questions kept coming up of I want to ride my bike, I want to run my bike. And um, he also said he wanted to return to work. So my question to him was, I’m sure you can go back to work. What do you do? He goes, well, I work at the arena, I work at the Amalie Arena and I work, I’m upstairs in the upper level and work with the food service. And I said, Oh, that’s really cool. You know, you get to go to all the hockey games and everything. And he said, yeah. I said when do you do this? He goes, well, I ride my bike to work. And then I, my jaw dropped to the, to the floor. And I was amazed. And he said, well, I want to get back to riding my bike to work and back. I said, well, where do you live in, in Tampa somewhere or something? He goes, no, I live in Dover. And I’m like, right, I don’t know where that is. And he goes, well, it’s, it’s outside of Tampa and we find it’s about 25 miles outside of Tampa. And, uh, I just was, you know, flabbergasted that he’s able to do this. And he had been doing it prior to his and wanted to return doing it. So, um, he said he had already tried when we saw him at the six-month visit and I guess there’s no going back from there. We said, absolutely, we want to get him back to work and kind of keep doing what he was doing. So he was kinda, we gave him his note and he was off his way returning to his job and biking to and from work 25 miles each way after his injury at six months.
It was one of the most amazing covered recoveries I’ve seen. It’s a process and it’s a process of being able to be determined. If I can get through that and I knew I could get through this hip replacement and femur replacement. Did one of the trips on 25 miles. It was hard. I realized I could do it. And a lot of reasons for that is because I like riding my bicycle. I don’t like leaving my bicycle up for too long. I’m 68 years old and people are 50 and 60 years old and they have bad accidents like this. There’s no reason for them to quit. If the body can heal, God has made this body to be able to heal itself. To the degree. If you’re active enough and you get exercise on a regular basis, there’s no reason why you can’t recover the full strength on both limbs. Not only is Dr. Miranda thorough. His Assistant Alison is thorough. They’re able to bring their medical knowledge down to earth where they, where they enable people to understand where, you know, the procedures and so forth. That’s what I feel. That is extraordinary for a, for a doctor and for a doctor’s assistant and you’re not, that’s not a common thing.
