Laura Lepper

Laura Lepper’s knees weren’t just causing her pain – they were limiting her horizon.

“The most important thing to me was that I couldn’t travel, ever since the pain became so bad,” said Laura, 62, of Holts Summit, Missouri. “Both knees had been giving me trouble for three years – that’s how long I waited until I found the help I needed.”

Laura had sought relief earlier, but found physicians reluctant to perform surgery. “One doctor told me I was too young for surgery -- that if I got the surgery now, I’d have to get it again in 15 years,” she said. “So what? I was in pain now, and it was keeping me from doing what I wanted to do. I wanted very badly to get the surgery done.”

A friend from church recommended that Lepper visit Dr. Bal. “They said I should talk to him, and I did. They said I would like him, and I did,” she said. “He was very thorough, and I always felt that he cared and wasn’t rushing me to do anything.”

After her left knee was replaced in May 2005, however, Laura was the one in a hurry. “I went into the hospital on a Thursday afternoon and came home Sunday by lunch. There was not much pain – in fact, the knee that had been replaced hurt less than my other knee.” Her original date for surgery for her right knee was in December, but it was moved up to August. “I told them I wanted to get the first available date, and they did the best they could. I came out of it great.

“I don’t know why I waited so long to do it. People who are considering surgery ought to ask themselves, ‘Do you hurt badly enough that you’re not doing the things you need or want to do? Then why wait?’ I waited, and it was the biggest mistake I ever made.”

Since her surgeries, Laura has begun getting around more. She has taken a bus tour to Kansas City and visited her son in Denver. She’s thinking about future trips to visit relatives in North Carolina and Oklahoma, and some journeys just for fun.

“I’ve always wanted to go to New York. But until the surgery, I didn’t feel capable of doing it -- there’s a lot of walking around when you go there. I’ve never been to New York, and now I’m going to go. But I couldn’t have done it without the surgery.”

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