In this video, we go over a list of the most frequently asked medical and physical therapy questions we’ve received through our triage line.
We perform all sorts of orthopedic surgery with the exception of orthopedic spine.
We do surgery at our Ambulatory Surgery Center, where you have the ability to go home later that afternoon and be more comfortable in your home. And we also do them at the hospital.
So to take your pain medication, you first of all, want to look at the bottle. As the directions are written, usually they’re worded something from once every four to six hours, upwards to once every day and a variety in between there. Typically, the caveat is written to take it as needed, so we want you taking it as you feel necessary within the confines of how the prescription was written out.
We will be glad to help you with your refill of antibiotics for the dentist. When you call our office, if you please, let our triage person know what pharmacy you prefer, we will electronically send it to the pharmacy of your choice and give you refills three times a year. We do then recommend that we refill that yearly for you, if you’ve ever had a total joint replacement.
I personally like to bring patients back into the office to be able to talk about the images and show them exactly what’s wrong, so we can talk about how to fix it. Oftentimes for lab results, a simple phone call will suffice.
It is often a good idea to get a second opinion, particularly for a complex problem. We’re networked with physicians all over the area and certainly would be happy to help set up a second opinion for you, either with one of our physicians here or with another local physician. If you wanna set up a second opinion on your own, we will be happy to get our records sent to them in a timely fashion to help out with that process.
Unfortunately, if you’re in injection hasn’t worked as we’d hope it would, we would have to look at what the next best steps are for you. This may include some additional imaging such as MRI. Also, we could do some physical therapy, strengthening exercises with a muscle group, which some people find brings them some help. If all of those options do not alleviate your pain, the next step would be for the physician to discuss the surgical options with you.
We do do sports physicals. We usually have three nights in the summer where we do them for free. If you sign up and then we can also do them at other times, but you have to pay charges.
So we do honor refills on pain medications. Typically, the way we like to refill a pain medication is we like to give you a seven day supply of that pain medication. The rationale behind that, although it may be an inconvenience to call our clinic or have to go to the pharmacy to pick it up, the reason we like to do it that way is simply because increased pain can be a warning sign of things like a blood clot or infection and we wanna make sure that you’re not taking too many pain medications to mask increased pain, so we like to be able to check in with you every seven days and find out exactly where your pain medications at to know how to appropriately write a refill.
The surgeons here at Stevens Point Orthopedics have, on average, about 21 years of experience.
We do. We have physical therapy here on site as well as at the Wisconsin Performance Institute facility.
When your child can return to sports is also a multifactorial decision that is based on what the therapist says, how your child is doing, and as well as what the doctor says. Typically the therapist will run them through a system of tests with our Noraxon system and that will give us a better indication if your child is ready to come back to sports.
Your pain is often not controlled when you’re not taking the pain medications appropriately. A lot of times, if you wait too long or try to space out too far in between your pain medications, it’s hard to chase that pain and to catch that pain. So during the early-on portions, immediately after surgery, we recommend you err on the side of caution and take them a little more frequently before you try to spread them out.
Trying to figure out who our best surgeon is, is a complicated question. Dr. Henneghan is the tallest, Dr. Williams is the fittest, Dr. Guse is the strongest, Dr. Haemmerle is the nicest and I think that Dr. Troyer is probably the smartest. Now, if you’re looking for a short, pudgy surgeon who talks too much, then that’s probably me. In all honesty, our surgeons specialize in different things, and our staff can help you figure out who’s the best surgeon for your specific problem.
