Knee Replacement 5: A Gold Medal Decision

While being poked, jabbed, drilled, and injected, as well as having my spleen removed to stabilize the platelet count in my bloodstream (in theory), I searched for an orthopedic surgeon to change my life. I’d walked away from one who would’ve done the surgery because it seemed too big a decision to trust a guy who just wanted to make a payment on his boat. Next, one of the leading orthopedic hospitals in the West ghosted me because I was a difficult case. My frustration was trending toward depression. Maybe that’s why I didn’t see that the answer was right in front of me.

A few years earlier, Dr. Karen Heiden had reattached my bicep after a water skiing accident. Karen was highly competent, positive, and part of a small, well-run Heiden Orthopedics in Salt Lake City and Park City. I looked her up. Maybe she did knees?

No such luck. A bicep repair is a long way from a complete knee replacement. But, in addition to being a fellow ginger, I noticed that Karen had the good sense to marry and partner with famous Olympian turned orthopedic surgeon, Eric Heiden.

And Eric did knees.

Flashback to 1980. I’m sitting in my dorm room, enduring mandatory study hall at a small boarding school in New Hampshire, when there’s a knock on the door. One of my hockey teammates sticks his head in.

Coach busted us out of study hall, he says. We can go to the snack bar and watch the Olympics.

As the crow flies, Lake Placid is about 100 miles from Meriden, NH, where we newly liberated hockey players were enjoying French fries and soda. On a small screen, a man, not much older than most of us, toed the start line of an ice oval in Lake Placid.

Look at the thighs on that guy! Squawks one of my teammates.

We looked and immediately felt inadequate.

Are those even real?

They were real all right, and they propelled Heiden to five gold medals—sweeping every men’s distance (500m, 1,000m, 1,500m, 5,000m, 10,000m) in speedskating. He set an Olympic record and a world record in the process. To this day, no other athlete has ever won all five speed skating events at a single Olympics. After retiring from skating, Heiden’s quads propelled a professional cycling career, during which he was part of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Road Cycling team and then competed in the 1986 Tour de France.

Then Heiden proved his brain was as big as his quads by going to Stanford and becoming an orthopedic surgeon. Specializing in sports medicine, he became team doctor for U.S. Olympic teams, Tour de France cycling teams, and pro basketball squads (Sacramento Kings and Sacramento Monarchs). Although his online profile listed knee replacements as one of his specialties, I figured he’d probably become a surgeon for the rich and famous.

Spoiler alert: I am neither. And I’m damaged goods, a spleen-less, under-plateletted, battered old ski bum. What were the odds he’d take me on? I called his office anyway. Maybe, since I was already in their files, they’d consider taking me on? It seemed doubtful, but I wasn’t unearthing any other options.

The call was answered by a human, who found me in their database, and a consultation was scheduled for the following week. Cautiously optimistic, I slalomed snowplows up Interstate 80 and got off at Kimball Junction. A roofline of redwood, ski-lodge-style timber, set off by neutral stucco walls, Heiden Orthopedics is a modest little beige building in a cluster of professional services businesses halfway between the interstate and Park City’s Old Town. Eyeing the boughs of aspen, bent by the new snow, I followed a hand-shoveled path that led through a foot of snow to the front door, where blue rock salt had been spread, but it hadn’t yet done its job. Treading carefully, I pull open a glass door.

The office is small and well-lit, tasteful and compact. The receptionist smiles and says my name with a question mark. I’m handed a clipboard, which I have barely filled out, when I’m called to meet the famous Eric Heiden. Wearing a button-down and the kind of slacks that look professional, but one could also wear to yoga class (roomy enough for an ex-Olympian’s quads), and sneakers with no logo, he moves smoothly, and with a smile. He shakes my hand. Ushering me into a small exam room, he gestures toward a leather-covered examination table. He sits on a low stool, positioning me higher than himself. Resting a clipboard on his knees, he looks up at me.

So, what’s going on? He asks, holding my gaze, not looking away or at his phone. He either genuinely cares about my answer or has developed some top-notch acting skills from his many television interviews.

I tell him my whole story— ex-athlete (nothing like you, I am quick to mention)—getting it out as quickly as I can so as not to lose his attention. I stress that although it may seem trite, given that I’ve won not a single gold medal, but the acts of skiing, skating, and other similar activities are really important to my life.

Of course, he says, with a smile. When you lose those, you lose quality of life.

Then I share the hard news: the wobbly platelet count, the ensuing rollercoaster of steroids and surgery, confusion and disappointment.

We can work with that, he says. I’ve looked at the x-rays. It’s time.

He stands.

We’ll get you fixed up.

There’s a moment. Did he just say yes? I want to fist-pump, to scream fuck-yeah, but resist the urge. Pushing my mind quickly to get on with it, to use this valuable time wisely, I ask him if I should do both replacements at the same time. He takes a moment, looks me up and down. Assessing, considering.

Do you need to, for work or insurance reasons?

Well, I definitely want to get them done in the same year, for insurance, I mean.

And then a thought occurs to me.

Didn’t you have both of yours done recently?

When he nods, I press on. And how did you do it?

I did them both at the same time.

And how was it?

He tilts his head to the side, shakes it slightly.

It really took a lot out of me, he says. Then adds: It was hard.

Now I gave him a long look. I’ve skated on the Olympic oval and felt the intolerable burning pain in my back and quads after only a couple of laps. I’ve also spent a considerable time on a road bike—some low-level racing, and had friends who rode the Tour de France—and the thing I know about both activities is that they share a basic rule: he who can suffer the most often wins. Endurance sports at the elite level are competitions of inner fortitude, cruel tests of an athlete’s willingness to suffer and perform through the pain. The other thing I know about these sports is that I was really not good at them. Ever. I’m a junior-level sufferer.

So, when Eric Heiden, one of the best sufferers in the world, says that undergoing two knee replacements at the same time took a lot out of him , I knew that plan was out of my league.

Well, if I don’t do them at the same time, how quickly is it feasible to do the second one?

Six weeks, he says, no less than six weeks.

At the front counter, I make appointments for early May and late July. Forty-two days apart.

Outside, the ice on the sidewalk is completely melted, and as I get back in my truck, I look at my watch. I’d been in there more than an hour, forty-five minutes spent with the famous Olympian, actively listening to my story, asking appropriate questions, and then promising to help me. As I’m driving home, I feel like I’ve created an ally, like I might just have a chance at new knees. Maybe I don’t have to relocate to Iowa.