LEXINGTON, Ky. (October 4, 2022) — Michael Stalker hails from generations of Eastern Kentuckians, living and growing up in the small town of Mouthcard, Kentucky. A lover of the great outdoors, Stalker was always on the go working at manual jobs and participating in some of his favorite activities: hunting, fishing, and especially tending his 50 hives, a job loved by generations of his family. .
But an active lifestyle, like Stalker’s, comes with risks.
In 1997, when he was 42 years old, Stalker was installing a roof on someone’s house for work. The next thing he knew, he slipped, fell many feet to the ground and sustained injuries that changed his life forever.
Stalker had broken many parts of his body, requiring multiple surgeries. Surgeons at a local hospital soon operated on his ankles, wrist and hip, but his worst injury was to his right elbow.
“The elbow was bad,” Stalker said. “They operated on me about nine times trying to fix it.”
As his elbow deteriorated over the next 24 years, Stalker eventually had to live his everyday life with a painful elbow that he could barely move.
“I couldn’t straighten it, I couldn’t bend it,” Stalker said. “I couldn’t really even put it in my mouth to scratch my head, or even feed myself, I was right-handed so I really had to adjust to this new life. I had to completely teach myself how to be left-handed.”
Stalker was forced to retire early due to his injuries, but he was resilient. He learned to adapt so he can continue doing the things he loves. Keeping beehives was a generational activity in his family: when Stalker was young, his grandfather kept bees and taught him everything he needed to know to keep his own.
“My grandfather kept bees and my dad kept bees,” Stalker said. “I grew up with this, Grandpa showed me how to do everything. When I was a kid, we used to go to the hills looking for them, and I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. I couldn’t tell you how long.
In June 2021, Stalker was doing exactly that – tending to his hives – and he had another accident. Stalker tripped and fell over all of his hives, landing directly on his previously injured elbow.
“It swelled up a lot, so I went to see a doctor here first,” Stalker said. “At first, I didn’t even realize that he was broken yet. The doctor saw my elbow and said it was so bad he couldn’t do anything about it anymore, so he sent me to a specialist in the UK.”
At UK HealthCare, Stalker saw Srinath Kamineni, MD, a US board-certified upper extremity specialist certified by the British Royal College of Surgeons in Orthopedic Surgery and UK Sports Medicine.
“When I got a date with him, he told me how messed up I really was,” Stalker said. “He told me he needed a complete elbow replacement. But he was confident and explained everything he could do for me”.
Kamineni said Stalker’s injury was so severe that he hardly knew how he could cope, even during the time it took for him to be transferred to the UK.
“It was really tough, bone on bone,” Kamineni said. “There was no cartilage left. And it was very deformed and unstable, especially after the second accident. He’s been dealing with this for so long, and our next step was to take a look at Michael’s life and set some expectations for what we could do.”
Kamineni investigated Stalker’s lifestyle and discovered his wants and needs for him to return to his usual activities.
Then he went over the options with Stalker. He could reconstruct his elbow with an allograft using cadaveric tissue and bone, fuse his joint resulting in zero motion in the elbow, or he could have a total elbow replacement. There are pros and cons to each choice, but Stalker ultimately told Kamineni that it was important for him to use his elbow as normally as possible, so that he could continue hunting and tending his bees.
Together, Kamineni and Stalker decided on a complete elbow replacement. This would provide stability and movement to Stalker’s joint and relieve the excruciating pain he was experiencing.
“With an elbow replacement, Stalker is permanently restricted in how much he can carry with that arm,” Kamineni said. “But, when we talked about it and set that expectation, Stalker was excited to be able to get full motion again. To feed himself, move on his own and do things that he couldn’t do before.”
The surgery came two months later, and Kamineni helped provide Stalker with home rehabilitation instructions that Stalker meticulously followed. For three months, Stalker was required to wear a motionless elbow brace to ensure a healthy recovery of his new joint.
“With a procedure like this, some patients have a hard time following the detailed instructions we give them for home care of their new joint,” Kamineni said. But not Michael. He was very diligent, very genuine and so committed to living a full life again, which showed in his eagerness to care for his joint as instructed. Ultimately, he wanted to make sure Michael didn’t need any additional surgery on this joint for essentially the rest of his life.”
“Now I don’t have a problem with that,” Stalker said. “It doesn’t hurt, I have good full motion of it. I can straighten it almost completely, eat by myself, scratch my head and all that, which I couldn’t do before.”
Stalker will still be limited in the amount of weight he can carry with his right arm, but he described regaining movement itself as huge.
“This elbow replacement changed my life,” Stalker said. “It gave me more use of my arm than I’ve had in a long time. I am very happy with what they have done, and Kamineni has been very good and very kind to me.”
Once Stalker recovered, he returned to his normal life. After his first trip back to the hunt, he sent Kamineni a photo of the first deer he was able to shoot, fish he had caught, and videos of his thriving hives.
“Patients like Michael Stalker are the joy of my job,” Kamineni said. “They are the reason for being in health care. He is a genuine and honest guy and has had a very interesting life, and I am privileged to be able to help these patients. So getting pictures and videos of him safely participating in his favorite activities again, that’s pure gold.”
And Kamineni, of course, recognized that a success story like this is all about teamwork.
“It’s not an individual effort by any means,” Kamineni said. “We wouldn’t be able to achieve success, like Michael, if it weren’t for the entire care team, of which I’m a part. And, in fact, Michael is probably the most important person in this team, also known affectionately in Britain as ‘Diamond Geezer’”.
Source: news.google.com