Ortho: Penny Fee, Dr. Steven Meyer
Siouxland’s best, meet one of Siouxland’s best

Penny Fee, 64, used to run two to three miles each day—on concrete.  It was no real surprise to her, then, that her joints suffered mightily for the wear.

“I had two bad knees for a long time,” she said. “I kept putting off knee replacement surgery, but eventually, just standing became difficult. And I need to stand a lot,” she says with a laugh.

But she’s not joking. Once named Siouxland Woman of the Year, Penny heads out on any given day either to teach a college class, run a board meeting or take her spot as volunteer at the museum or library. Along the way, she gathers up organic foods for her catering business, checks in with the non-profit she founded or delivers a rescued pet to his new home.

“Joint problems can take part of your life away,” says Steven Meyer, M.D., a board-certified orthopedic surgeon on the medical staff at Mercy Medical Center-Sioux City. “Penny is a very, very active lady, and her knees were obviously compromising her lifestyle.”

Penny needed two total knee replacements. Her own research and advice from her physician-husband Paul Fee, M.D., led her to one of the top joint replacement surgery facilities in the nation: the Total Joint Care Center of Mercy Medical Center-Sioux City.

Independent analysts with HealthGrades®, which ranks 5,000 hospitals nationwide, gave Mercy their Excellence Award for Joint Replacement Surgery overall, as well as five stars for Total Knee Replacements specifically.  Mercy’s Orthopedic Care Services and its General Surgery Services also both earned five stars.

Add to that the Patient Safety Awards HealthGrades® has pinned on Mercy staff over the years, and it’s clear how hundreds of patients benefit from life-changing treatment right at home. If it weren’t for Mercy and its staff, patients like Penny would need to travel over 200 miles to Duluth or 380 miles to Minneapolis to get the same high quality care.

“At Mercy, it’s all about relationships, between staff, doctors and patients,” says Dr. Meyer.  “I know, for example, that Mercy will have the equipment I need and that everyone works collaboratively with each other from the first time a patient walks through the door until he or she leaves. Our patients know they can trust us implicitly.  It’s a great place to practice medicine.”

This “attitude of collaboration,” as Dr. Meyer calls it, leads to successes like Penny’s.

“I got along great, and the things I do are now so much more pleasant,” she says.

Penny says she’s been faithful in keeping up with her Rehabilitation Program while resuming her full schedule of community activities, plus attending two book clubs, singing in the choir, gardening and antiquing.

She’s also happy to fill her home again with sweet, warm aromas during what she calls her “marathon baking” sessions, which require several trips between her kitchen and the basement pantry.

 “Before, my knees just slowed me down too much. Now, I don’t even think about it,” she says. “I now have my life back.”