Carissa Mueller

Dr. Kew saved my athletic career and gave me back the thing which is most important to me – the opportunity to lift heavy for the rest of my life!

I’m an elite-level CrossFit athlete, and I ended up with Dr. Kew after hitting a pothole while riding my electric scooter home. My knee dislocated in the accident and I had to pop it back in place in order to get out of the street. An ambulance took me to the emergency room at NY Presbyterian, where the physician who saw me recommended Dr. Kew by name. I honestly just nodded and smiled because I knew there was no way that my post-traumatic brain (which had also been awake for over 24 hours at that point) would ever remember her name. Imagine my surprise when I got home the next morning and Dr. Kew was calling me to get me scheduled! I was so thankful!

Dr. Kew sent me for an MRI, and when I opened the results I almost threw up. The report was basically a 5-paragraph essay describing in detail how obliterated my knee was. I think I actually tore everything except the PCL. Most notably, I had a complete ACL rupture, detached lateral meniscus, complex tear in the medial meniscus, and high grade MCL sprain. Dr. Kew was so great when we met to go over the results. She was so kind and empathetic to how difficult this would be for me as an athlete. She had a clear plan specific to the demands of my sport, and I remember being so impressed by her ability to explain complex medical information without dumbing it down. She was clear with me that my rehab would be extremely difficult but she was also equally clear that I would be able to get back to 100%, and I believed her.

Going into surgery, I was most nervous about the medial meniscus. I had done my research so I knew that the meniscus is difficult to repair, many repairs fail later anyway, and a repair complicates ACL rehab, so often surgeons opt to remove it. However, that would have been the end of my career in heavy lifting given the function of the meniscus. The plan was to repair it if possible, but the tear was so complex that it couldn’t be visualized clearly on the MRI so Dr. Kew had to make a judgment call during surgery. I was so relieved when I woke up and Dr. Kew told me that she was able to repair it (with 1 stitch, I believe!)

The rehab was indeed-extremely-difficult. The most difficult part for me was that outside of the professional sports world, systems aren’t really set up to support a return to sport performance rather than sport participation. People also don’t understand how to work with athletes. They think that athletes need to be constantly challenged and pushed to their limits, when what an athlete really needs is help making it safe to slow down and get the basics to 100% so that they can push themselves later. Dr. Kew understood this dynamic and stuck with me for the whole process. She helped me recognize some red flags with my first PT and facilitated a switch to HSS for my PT, where I worked with John Cavanaugh, who was crucial in laying the foundation for a successful rehab.

Even once I was discharged from physical therapy, I still had a 45% strength deficit in my operative leg, which presented obvious challenges for returning to my lifts, not to mention basic things like jogging or walking down the stairs. I spent the next 16 months piecing together resources to help me navigate the journey back. I had a lot of great people helping me – a coach, a PT, an acupuncturist, a chiropractor – but each of them sees only one piece of the puzzle, and their perspectives do not always align. It’s up to the athlete to put everything together and make the final decisions on how to proceed, which is very difficult to do when you’re the one in it and also have no experience or medical knowledge about the injury! Dr. Kew was like my chief advisor during this phase of my rehab. I came to her often with questions about what I was experiencing and she helped me understand when to be concerned and when not to be, when to push and when to pull back, and how to make the best decisions based on my injury, rehab status, and athletic goals.

I am now 2 years post-op and I am extremely proud to report that my knee is functioning at 100%! I am now just working on rebuilding strength and planning for my return to competition. It’s truly incredible that I am where I am today given the shape of my knee 2 years ago. I owe it all to Dr. Kew and her incredible team, and I now volunteer at HSS with the Service Excellence Team to help provide that same experience to other patients. To Dr. Kew, her PA Michelle, Victoria, Kathy, Myrna, Georgia, Dr. Kew’s surgical team at NYP, John Cavanaugh, and everyone else at HSS and NYP who made this exceptional care possible: THANK YOU! I can’t wait to get back out on the floor and represent all of you with every lift!