“I went into surgery about three weeks after the injury. I was kind of debating getting the surgery just because I felt really strong. But I feel like I have a long career left, so I know it’s probably important to do so.”
Makes sense, to be sure. But he couldn’t have anticipated the journey that would ensue once he did.
“I did the patellar tendon graft on July 10th. I was into PT the very next day. I stayed in Vegas for six weeks after that, doing PT twice a day, working with Bo [Sandoval] once a day and I was feeling great. But I still had pain on the anterior part of my knee, like the patella and slightly under that. So after four months I got another MRI and then the doctor said ‘No wonder why you have so much pain there, because your patella tendon is still torn, it never healed.’ And I had a huge fracture on my kneecap; where they took the actual graft, that never healed.
“So I came back to Sacramento. I was doing PT here. I started talking with one of my friends that’s an orthopedic surgeon. He’s really well known as far as the stem cells and we did a stem cell procedure.”
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Almost as painful as Emmett’s ordeal is listening to him describe it acute detail. It’s not for the faint of heart.
“That procedure was another painful thing. This is where they drill into my SI joints on both sides. They extract the bone marrow from my hips and then they inject it into the bone straight through the patella straight into the patella tendon to hopefully stimulate the growth hormone or growth factors to start healing.
“I was on crutches for another two weeks; non-weight bearing. I was in another brace for six more weeks and got back into PT after that, still having a lot of pain.
“I did a hyaluronic acid injection which a lot of people that are older and have osteoarthritis, get this in their seventies, eighties, whatever. So I got that done and I’m making progress now. Things are healing. I’m doing a lot more, so I can’t complain.”
