Kevin Belbey

In the spring of 2016, I broke my fifth metatarsal (Jones Fracture) playing rec league basketball. It happened during my final year of law school at Syracuse. I had surgery up in Central New York, and while I had to crutch across the graduation stage, I was told I would be back to health in four to six weeks.

That never happened. In fact, when I moved to New York City months later, it still was not healed. I decided to go to HSS when 9 months post-surgery, I could not walk up a flight of stairs without feeling pain.

Dr. Mark Drakos of HSS was excellent from the moment I met him. He immediately knew what was wrong, and told me that because of some mistakes made at the other hospital, my foot was inevitably going to break again (which it did).

When my foot broke the second time, I went and saw Dr. Drakos on a Monday, who told me it was time for HSS to do the surgery and do it right so I never had to deal with this again. I asked him how soon we could do surgery, and he proposed the very next day. I then asked if he and I should stay in touch because there was supposed to be a blizzard of 2-3 feet of snow the next morning. Dr. Drakos told me “I will be at the hospital no matter what—so if you can get there, we will do the surgery.”

I got to the hospital, and Dr. Drakos was there like he said he would be. He performed surgery in a mostly empty hospital due to the snow storm.

In my recovery, Dr. Drakos ordered me to perform a couple of months of physical therapy. I was lucky enough to be connected to Julie Khan of HSS at the James M. Benson Sports Rehabilitation Center.

During my first recovery in Syracuse, I was never told to do physical therapy, which I think wound up harming me in the long-term. Julie was crucial in my recovery, as she helped build up both my physical strength and mental confidence. She also tailored workouts to things I enjoyed, including swimming and non-contact basketball dribbling drills.

Now, I am back on the court, playing basketball 3-4 times each week here in NYC. I play without pain, and without ever even thinking about my foot. I will forever be grateful to Dr. Drakos & Julie Khan for helping get me “back in the game!”