Jarod Hooey

To start, I was a very active 24 year old and 6’7" at the time of my incident. I was in a very bad car accident in Tennessee. I ended up in the ICU with two brain bleeds, an injured wrist and knee. The doctors in Tennessee could not figure out exactly what was wrong with my knee and I was given a couple different answers. After seeing a specialist in Tennessee, he said that he would not operate on my knee because there was a fractured bone piece very close to the main artery in the back of my leg. We did not know what our options were but the specialist suggested looking elsewhere. After almost three weeks of not knowing what to do, our family members that have been to HSS for other surgeries were able to reach out to their surgeons to put us in contact with Dr. DiFelice.

I am very fortunate that I had found him because he was able to give answers to what was going on with my knee. I had a fractured tibia plateau and one of the fragments had my PCL attached to it. One of the fractured pieces was 3mm away from the major artery in the back of my leg. To say this was a very tricky procedure would be an understatement. Dr. DiFelice and his team told me that it was a very rare injury but assured me I was in good hands. There were two options - to either open my entire knee to get behind and put back the fractured pieces or do it with an arthroscopic procedure. The team was confident about the arthroscopic procedure which saved me an extensive recovery period. We went through with the initial surgery and Dr. DiFelice and his team were able to repair my knee using arthroscopic procedures! I was in physical therapy working as hard as I could with getting my leg back to normal but because of the waiting time before the surgery and being non weight-bearing for almost two months it was very difficult to get my range of motion back. Six months later my range of motion was not ideal but I improved immensely (25 degrees post surgery to 115 degrees) so I went back to have a manipulation surgery. Now, three months after the manipulation surgery, I am back to normal!

I appreciate the entire HSS team and Dr. DiFelice and his team immensely. I would not be back to living a normal healthy life if it were not for them. I have nothing but the best things to say.