Keith Lawler - 04/08, Dr. Bose

Keith just sent me this email and gave me permission to post it, so here it is:

From: Keith Lawler
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 6:34 AM
To: Vicky Marlow
Subject: Re: Surface Hippy Hi Vicky,

I am now back in Santa Barbara and am 16 days post op. The surgery went great and Dr. Bose was very pleased with the results. Thank you so very much for all your information and highly recommending Dr. Bose as I consider myself extremely lucky that after all those months of information gathering that I finally decided on Dr. Bose.As is turned out, when Dr. Bose opened me up, he found that my hip had some very bad problems that had not shown up in the x-rays or MRI. After the operation was over, he told me that I was very fortunate to have come to him because in his opinion, most other surgeons would have not been willing to tackle the problem and they would have just done a total hip replacement. He told me that he was able to fix the problems and considered the operation a 100% success and he was extremely pleased with the result. Due to the complexity of my particular surgery, to allow for proper healing, he put the additional restriction on me of using crutches for 6 weeks and not putting more than 20% of my weight on my new hip during those 6 weeks. After that he told me I have no restrictions and can return to sports in about 6 months.

We arrived back here about 3 days after we left Chennai with a one day stop in Bangkok.  Although my air travel is virtually free, I do travel on a space available basis with the airlines so I was a little worried abut getting home promptly.  As it turned out, I was very lucky and fortunate because when Thai Airways from Chennai to Bangkok realized I was a retired United Airlines pilot , even though the airplane was very full, they gave us 4 seats across in coach so I could lay down the whole flight. Out of Bangkok, we were given First Class on my airline United all the way home to California so the remaining trip home turned out to be very nice and comfortable and I was able to sleep in my sleeper seat all the way back.

I cannot express how grateful I am to you for guiding me towards choosing Dr. Bose. FYI, from the information and things that I learned while in India, I believe Dr. Bose is definitely without a doubt the top hip resurfacing surgeon in the world. If one had to make a second choice it would be Dr. McMinn and third choice Dr. De Smet. From what I now know, I personally would not go to any doctors here in the US as it is just too early in the learning curve to trust any of them especially if ones hip turns out to have a problem that was unexpected.

The hospital staff were terrific and Mohan was as usual wonderful and very efficient in making arrangements. Medical tourism is becoming big business so I left some recommendations before I left the hospital as there were a couple of things that definitely were needed to bring the Platinum Ward up to world class standards:

Noise
My room was quite noisy with outside traffic and horn blowing despite the fact that I was in the only room that they had tried to soundproof as a test before doing the other rooms. Unfortunately what they did was to add a second set of dual pane windows in addition to the original dual pane windows. Although this remedy does add a little soundproofing, it is not the correct way to soundproof and did not correct the problem. The correct way to get real soundproofing would have been to add another set of dual pane windows using two panes of laminated glass instead of regular glass. Laminated glass in dual pane windows is the key to soundproofing and that is the way it is done here in top line office buildings, hotels, hospitals, and other commercial construction.

Bed
I did not notice until I started getting severe pains in my butt during post-op that the mattress used on the beds was very poor quality and was not good padding and was so well worn that there was virtually no padding under my butt thereby eventually causing a pressure points that kept me in terrible pain and took several days to subside after I left hospital. I recommended that they find a better padded mattress and watch them carefully for wear.

Bathroom
Lighting was very dim and they had no light directly in front of sink which made it almost impossible to shave and see what you were doing on your face. I suggested better lighting.

TV
Almost all TVs have headphone jacks so you can listen to TV without subjecting anyone else to sound. With noise canceling headphones that I brought with me, it would have also allowed me to listen to the TV without the distraction of the horns from the traffic outside. Unfortunately the TVs used in the hospital are one of the few TVs that have no headphone jack. Because of this I watched very little TV since it was not fun to listen to as it competed with the traffic noise outside. I suggest buying TVs with headphone jacks.

With these simple improvements, I believe the Platinum Ward would be brought up to a much better standard. Whether they are smart enough to listen to my suggestions, I do not know. You probably have more influence with them so you might want to mention these things to them as they are are all very simple upgrades and definitely a must if they want to bring the ward up to foreign standards for a first class ward.

Thanks again and again for all your help as you have been an angel of mercy in helping me choose Dr. Bose. Please feel free to email me or call me anything if you need any more info on how it went at the hospital. Keep recommending Dr. Bose to everyone as I think he is absolutely the best and his results are well worth the hassle of going all the way to India.

Take care and best regards,
Keith