Home › Blog › Cyndi’s Knee Stem Cell Injection Results: Conquering Snowmass Mountain

When we hear about someone conquering mountains nowadays, more often than not, the phrase is symbolic—a dream job that seemed out of reach is realized, the underdog college football team takes down the Goliath team in the national championships, the boy gets the girl who is completely out of his league, and so on. Occasionally, however, when someone conquers a mountain, they really conquer a mountain, and such was the case with Cyndi, a 53-year-old early retiree.

To be honest, Cyndi’s first mountain actually was symbolic: a right medial meniscus injury, a left ACL tear, and arthritis in her right knee. Her second mountain, however, was quite literal: Snowmass Mountain in Colorado. And Cyndi conquered both. Without further ado, let’s take a look at Cyndi’s knee stem cell injection results and her Snowmass Mountain experience.

Cyndi’s Knee Stem Cell Injection Results

Cyndi’s stem cell story begins with Dr. John Pitts at our clinic here in Colorado in November of 2016. She presented with two main knee injuries—one from skiing and one from soccer—and also wear and tear and some smaller injuries to her knees from simply living an active lifestyle. Dr. Pitts performed bilateral knee stem cell injections in multiple sites, including her right knee medial joint compartment, right medial meniscus, into her right femoral bone, and left knee ACL (see Cyndi’s picture, above).

We recently received an update with some stunning pictures of Cyndi’s knee stem cell injection results and her amazing post-procedure activities. What follows is in Cyndi’s own words:

I can’t thank you enough…I continue to heal and progress activity.  I read all the e-books, followed all the prep (supplements, diet, PT, pool) and post procedure guidelines (rest two weeks, bracing, progressive exercise/activity) and I am really pleased with my results. Prior to the injection procedure I could ambulate realistically only about .75 miles, had constant edema and much difficulty with single limb stance bilaterally. This was not what I had dreamed about for my early retirement.

I am psyched to thank you and report my progress: My Husband and I summitted Snowmass Mountain 6/30/17. It was a dream come true! Mt. Snowmass is one of CO remote 14ers in the Elk Mountain Range (Aspen.) Some details:

Snowmass East Slope Route: 22 miles roundtrip

Day 1: 8.5 miles: hike up to Snowmass Lake. This involved carrying our back packs (~35 pounds) uphill and crossing the “log jam.” I was psyched that I was easily able to walk uphill with that load and my balance has improved that I was easily able to cross the log jam. After we set up camp, I then scouted the summit route for about an hour or so.

Day 2: 5 miles: first route find through willows/snow making our way around Snowmass Lake followed by a steep scree field, then kick step with micro spikes up a very long, steep snow ascent. The fun begins: scramble (non-roped rock climbing) along the rock ridge to Snowmass Summit [see Cyndi at the summit in the feature picture at the top of this post]. Descent: more fun ridge scramble followed by snow descent, scree descent and willow bushwhack back to camp.

Day 3: 8.5 miles: hike back down to trailhead, again crossing the log jam

In addition, I did not have any soreness/edema/pain post adventure and I did not even think about my knees during the trip…feeling good—thank you so much…Dr. Pitts, thank you for your skill and excellent care! My retirement is back on track filled with scrambling, hiking, mountain biking, yoga, birding…Also, many people ask me about Regenexx and I have referred 3 patients to you so far.

The upshot? We loved hearing about Cyndi’s knee stem cell injection results, and being able to follow her on her post Regenexx journey. We spend an awful lot of time researching to continue to improve procedures and on the Registry data to predict who will benefit most from them, but this is why we do what we do every day—so people can get back to conquering their mountains, whatever their “mountains” may be.

Chris Centeno, MD is a specialist in regenerative medicine and the new field of Interventional Orthopedics. Centeno pioneered orthopedic stem cell procedures in 2005 and is responsible for a large amount of the published research on stem cell use for orthopedic applications. View Profile