THE KNEE'D TO KNOW DIARIES

It’s been a good 12 years since Spexy Lady wore 5-inch heels of the towering platform persuasion. Time was, if a shoe wasn’t at least 3 inches in height, it wasn’t worth wearing…and that included flip flops! At a mere 5’1” (and shrinking) height, SL craves 5-inch heels like oxygen.

But too many years skiing on shredded cartilage is a recipe for disaster, not to mention, a visit to the ortho to repair all that peppermint-patti skiing (it dulled the pain, duh!).

One surgery too many  landed SL in god-awful flats, flip flops, and--heaven forbid--running shoes for the last 12 years. There were Manolos (kitten heels), Zanotti’s, YSLs and plenty of Brunos to pop on for those party do’s and ladies-who-lunch affairs. But for the most part, those height-imparting stilettos were a thing of the past. (Yes, more than one tear has been shed over this fate.)

Fast-forward to 2012, the year of reckoning, and sucking it up to see the magic man with the knife. He should feel honored, since he was picked from the cream of the crop: New York City's finest, Vail's Steadman-Hawkins Clinic, and virtually every A-list ortho in DFW. And with each visit, visions of a bionic knee danced in my head.

Like finding a needle in a haystack, I found the man ( Hint: his first and last name are my favorite New Testament saints) who would not only straighten a very crooked leg (no longer able to even think about fitting into a ski boot, much less those towering Louboutins!) So, SL bit the bullet, went under the knife first of the year, and is living—and there’s no joke in that -- to tell the tale.

The “kneed to know diaries” are all about what you should and should not do when ordering up a brand new knee (think ordering a new car, but with less service). And it’s also about what’s really wrong with today’s health care system. It’s broken, dear friends, like the heels on those very, very high heels I once broke trying to catch a cab in New York.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, love your knees. Treat them kindly. Cherish every moment they let you wear those gorgeous, towering, powerful stilettos!