DAKOTA DUNES, S.D. (KTIV) – When you watch the Summer Olympics, you see how high gymnasts can fly. But, the landing takes a toll on every part on the body. And, for one former high school and college gymnast, the lingering pain from the sport kept her from enjoying her life years later.
“I was fortunate to be able to do it all through high school and college,” said Amanda Lauer, patient.
Gymnastics was Amanda Lauer’s passion for much of her life.
“Primarily the uneven bars and balance beam,” said Lauer.
But, that passion came with pain starting in middle school.
“I started to experience some pain, and then it just kind of progressively got worse through high school and college,” said Lauer.
A knee surgery in high school helped, but the pain persisted.
“I would say towards the end of college, I got to be pretty, pretty tough,” Lauer said. “I had a lot of pain with squatting, jumping, that type of thing.”
And in the last few years…
“I started to experience a lot more pain with just daily things such as going up or downstairs, and even just working with my patients, it started to bother me,” Lauer said.
Lauer, a physical therapist, knew she had to see a doctor.
“So she had a really complex problem whereby she had lost a large piece of cartilage beneath the patella of both knees,” said Dr. Joseph Carreau, CNOS Orthopaedic Surgeon.
Dr. Joseph Carreau is an orthopaedic surgeon at CNOS.
“So in her case, I was able to transplant cartilage from a donor into her knee, and we did that on both sides, and was able to restore… or that missing cartilage help reduce her pain and improve her activity level,” said Carreau.
That’s right, Lauer had cartilage transplanted from a cadaver’s knee into her knee.
“It makes you really thankful for the organ donation,” said Lauer. “I was able to write a letter to the family thanking them for their donation, which was pretty awesome to do.”
Months of physical therapy followed. And just like that, Lauer was the patient, not the PT.
“I am fortunate to work with so many great therapists that kind of kept me on track,” said Lauer.
“In the end, she did very well, and we ended up doing the second knee six months later, yeah, something like that, five or six months later, did the second knee, and she’s done okay,” said Lauer.
Oh, it’s amazing,” said Lauer. “I can now go up and down stairs without even thinking about my knees. They don’t give out like they used to. It’s just nice to not even have to worry about my knees anymore.”
Each night this week hear the stories of recovery leading up to our special, Recovery Road: Inside Sports Medicine airing October 30th at 6:30 p.m. right here on KTIV.
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