By Colin McEwen
Record-Courier staff writer
Tim Fear has felt pain in left knee for several years, from an active lifestyle that includes racquetball and football.
The pain has progressively gotten worse, and after exhausting every other option Fear needed a knee arthroplasty " or total knee replacement.
He got that opportunity at Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna on July 28.
He has been a patient of Dr. Marcy Dickey, an orthopedic surgeon, for nearly 10 years. She has tried a variety of treatments over the years to cease Fear's excruciating pain.
With Fear's family at his side, Dickey visited him before the procedure, explaining what he should expect in the next few hours. He would need three days of rest at the hospital and weeks of rehabilitation.
Dickey then met with her medical team, which would assist in the surgery, and enjoyed a snack of crackers and a soda. As the anesthesia worked its way into Fear's 6-foot-plus frame, she scrubbed up thoroughly, even making sure to sanitize under her fingernails.
When Fear was unconscious, the team of medical workers began the procedure like they had many others before.
Accompanying Dickey, the team consisted of two nurse anesthetists, two surgical assistants, a surgical technician and a circulating nurse. Dickey performs more than 300 similar procedures each year, 50 of those are knee replacements. Members of the surgical team perform many of their procedures with each other, so they seem to know everyone's movements and mannerisms.
The tourniquet cut off blood flow; the left leg was placed through a sheet and was swabbed down. When tools were called out, the surgical tech knew exactly what was needed and the wounded knee was carefully opened. The source of Fear's pain was revealed with white bone.
When another tool was needed, it was passed down the line to whomever was using it and back again.
For the length of a Bob Seger album playing in the operating room, space was cleared for the new prosthetic knee with painstaking attention to detail.
It was a scene certainly not fit for the faint-of-heart.
The drills buzzed and droned, filling the cold and sterilized air with dust bone matter. The odor of cauterized flesh smelled as if a mound of hair was piled high in the large white room and lit ablaze.
The area between Fear's tibia and the fibula was sculpted to perfectly fit Fear's new knee, with holes drilled to fit.
And just as abruptly as it began, 90 minutes later, the surgery was complete when the three pieces of his new prosthetic knee fit snugly into his leg. The surgery was sealed with the bone cement that became hot in the hands of the surgical technician. The leg was sewn and Fear began his long road to recovery.
"Most people who have this procedure are in a lot of pain and can't do the things they want to do," said Dickey. "This helps them get back to their life. They didn't choose to have this pain."