Bob Aijala: Partial Knee Replacement Testimonial

My name is Bob Aijala. I’m originally from Massachusetts and I lived in Florida for about 10 years now. I was a jogger. I jogged for 30 plus years, maybe 20 to 25 miles a week, and after 30 plus years of jogging, about two and a half to three years ago, I started to get some pain. Started to get sore. And then it began to, to become much more severe. It started to hinder my quality of life and I felt I had to do something. I took my grandkids last May to Disney World before I had the surgery and my little granddaughter who was seven at the time, every morning, she said, Grampy, here’s your cane. And she’d hand me her cane and I was hobbling. Oh, every 10 or 15 minutes I had to stop and I had to sit down. I had to rest my knee.

My primary care doctor had recommended Florida Orthopaedic Institute and he did recommend Dr. Garlick and another doctor. So I did a little research online and read up about both doctors and saw that they had very good credentials. And then I came to the conclusion that the other treatments that I had had maybe alleviated a little bit, but it didn’t give me the quality of life that I felt I wanted. After researching with Dr. Garlick’s testimonials that I read, I decided that Florida Orthopedic Institute was the, was the place to go. He looked me straight in the eye and he gave me these instructions to do for getting myself ready for surgery and he said, I’ve been doing this for around, I think he said 15 years, and I haven’t had one infection. And he says, I don’t want you to be the first. And that impressed me with the attention to detail that he had. I felt pretty good. I felt I was in the right. I had the right guy the day of the surgery. Don’t remember how long I was on there. I wasn’t alone much more than an hour, maybe hour and a half come out of it. No pain. Dr. Garlick came in and said everything went well. My wife came in and said that he went down and saw her and reassured her that everything went well. The rehab when they came to the house lasted, I think it was seven visits, six or seven visits, and gave me exercises to do, follow them diligently. And Dr. Garlick checked me out when I went back and he said, you look great. I had the flexion and movement with the old and the knee and said, everything’s looking good and well, it’s six to eight weeks. I felt almost back to normal. Being able to walk and go to the store. I’ll walk around and start to go over the gym and start to do some exercises, but I can go to Disney. Take my wife. I can be on my feet all day, walk around all day. It’s almost a year now. It’ll be a year in June. It’s the fourth best thing I ever did. The first best was, of course, married my wife. A second and third was my two kids being born. And the fourth was getting my knee done because it’s been great. I can’t say enough.