I had severe bone on bone arthritis,
and this was a
career-threatening injury to me.
So, I really felt I had to have this surgery
in order to continue to play professionally.
I'm a concert pianist by profession,
but really, my passion is all about piano and music.
And I've been playing piano since I was four years old.
I perform with the National Symphony,
I perform with the 21st Century Consort.
I have a teaching studio, the Sarratt Studio,
and I am a Steinway artist and music....
it's my life.
So, when I began my journey
feeling this pain in my thumb, I first went to Dr.
Kessler about five years ago.
He took X-rays.
It was moderate arthritis, and we decided to go with cortisone
injections. That worked for about five years.
Then I had severe pain.
I couldn't turn my thumb under.
I had shooting pain going up my arm.
So I go back to Dr.
Kessler and he takes more X-rays,
and it shows a severe bone on bone arthritis, a severe progression.
And he's like, if you want to continue to play professionally,
you need to have surgery.
This was a huge, huge decision
and I was very apprehensive.
And I am so grateful to my husband, Boyd Sarratt,
who's also a musician, and was helping me and supporting me in this decision
to have the surgery.
So I asked Dr.
Kessler to look at my website and to look at how I approached the keyboard.
So he did.
I was completely impressed that he took the time to go to my website.
Saying, 'I watched your Rachmaninoff,
and I know I can help you.'
His confidence was infectious to me,
I knew that I was going to have him do my surgery.
But the success of this surgery completely determined
whether I would be able to continue my passion of playing the piano,
but also I knew that his skill
was tremendous.
When I'm taking care of patients who are musicians, people who do specific activities with their hands,
we can't just be cookie cutter or cookbook
about how we do our surgeries.
We have to be specific about the activities that they do.
And specifically, in Lisa's case, because she has
to bring her thumb under when she's playing a scale
and when she reaches a chord and has to widen her hands,
I wanted to make sure that she wasn't going to lose a note
or hit a double note when she was doing those activities.
So, in the pre-op area, I actually took a ruler to measure the distance
between the tip of her thumb and the tip of her small finger to make sure that
when I put her thumb in the new position, she wouldn't reach too far and hit a double note,
or be short and not be able to reach the proper notes in playing the different chords and scales.
I had this trapezium bone removed
and then 25% of this abductor pollicis
longus tendon was harvested and used in the reconstruction
so that everything works really quite perfectly for me.
I have no pain when I play now.
It is amazing.
I started therapy with Lenora Brasher,
and she has helped so much in my recovery.
She manipulates my tendons, so if it's feeling tight, she takes care of that.
She gives me exercises and I'm getting stronger and stronger.
So, here we are
today at three months post-surgery,
and I'm now able, as I was saying, to turn the thumb under,
I'm back playing with the National Symphony and just finished up
with a 50th anniversary celebration of the Kennedy Center.
I'm pinching myself and so glad I made this decision.
It was quite an emotional experience for me, and it was a journey
to go through this, and I would say I could not be more thrilled.
And I feel like a big part of my life has been restored and I'm extremely grateful.