Dear Dr. Gausden, Ms. Newman, Ms. Taylor, and Ms. Shelton:
This note is to thank you for your expertise, support, efficiency, help and encouragement before, during, and after my May 1, 2023 hip replacement surgery (right hip, anterior approach). My internist had advised me to go to HSS for my procedure. From our first contact, I knew I was in good hands.
Thank you, Kenya, for your intelligent understanding, friendly good humor, and for always making me feel my calls were welcome and important. Thank you, Samantha, for your uncanny understanding - no doubt from experience, warmhearted human compassion, and general brilliance. Thank you, Hayden, for the supreme professionalism and immediate understanding of my condition and needs, for representing Dr. Gausden so completely, and for answering every question I ever posed.
And thank you, Dr. Beth Gausden, for being someone I immediately felt I could not only trust with my life, but with whom I could become friends were we to meet under other circumstances. Thank you for your utter lack of arrogance, for your amiable, friendly professionalism, for a total absence of condescension; for treating me like an individual, not just another patient - though I am sure you and your team treat every patient this way.
And, after all, thanks to the entire OR team (including Dr. Kumar) for a procedure that has allowed me to emerge after about 2.5 months with hardly a scar, and functioning that feels 100% normal. On July 17, I walked over 20,000 steps, including over the Brooklyn Bridge, with zero pain. Indeed, right from the get-go, I only needed Oxycodone on the first two days at home, and only 5mg of the permitted 10mg. Acetaminophen quickly went from 1,000mg three times a day, to twice a day, to 500mg, to zero in hardly over a week.
My wife would make little iPhone videos of my progress. A friend, who is an occupational therapist with years of experience, said she has never seen anyone recover from such surgery as quickly. Another friend, a physical therapist, concurred.
I am forever grateful to you all for your skill, your caring attitude, and for your Menschlichkeit.
Respectfully,
Jerry Wechsler
All by Physician