President Brewster rang the Rotary to begin this week’s meeting. Nick Heriford gave the invocation which centered on the opening of a time capsule in Detroit buried in the early 20th century proclaiming the achievements at that time such as, calling by phone across the country and being able to travel from Detroit to Chicago by train in only 8 hours, a very appropriate invocation considering today’s topic (more on this later) and the club sang the My Country Tis of Thee, acapella and led by Lisa Smith. Sue Angel roamed the room delivering the microphone for Rotarians to introduce their guests. Diane Sanborn declared the club in good physical health, no one spoke up for the mental state of the club, which is likely sick of winter and ready for spring and can occur any time between now and July in Michigan. Sue Angel called for volunteers, if they are available next Wednesday for Women’s Build Day on behalf of Habitat for Humanity. President Brewster recognized Irv Nichols, who just received the Rotary Michigan’s Hero at the District Conference held last week. Additionally, our club received recognition for our work on the End Polio Now campaign. Donna Gardner stepped to the podium to remind us one last time about our personal commitment to Rotary International by making our contribution to the Paul Harris annual campaign. Please take the time to contribute whatever you can to this important commitment we all made when we joined Rotary. Donna shared many good reasons to make your Paul Harris contribution, the most impactful reasons to make Donna happy and to not make Donna mad, either of these emotions she assured those in attendance she can express. As this week’s official observer of club events, I noticed these statements caused some to reach for their checkbooks as Donna closed her remarks. Next, President Brewster bestowed the Red Badge to William DuBois as his welcome to Lansing Rotary gift, his gift to the club was today’s lunch prepared by those at his home base the Crown Plaza. Casey Kandow was called forward to receive his Blue Badge, his double secret probation time finally came to a successful conclusion. Casey is originally from Rogers City, Michigan as the son of a son of a sailor on our own Great Lakes. Casey played basketball in high school well enough and tall enough (6’4”), to consider continue playing in college in division 2 or 3, but chose to attend Michigan State University instead. This turned out to be a good choice, since this is where he met his wife Lyndsey, with whom he now has three children and make their home in DeWitt. Casey is currently the COO of McLaren Health Systems in his free time. April birthdays were presented by Doug Wiesner with the timely question to our April birthday celebrants – When do you know it is Spring in Michigan? As expected the sound of peepers in the night and the sight of flowering trees were noted. Others expressed an irresistible calling to get the golf clubs out of storage after noticing the flags are back on the greens of our local golf courses. The more pragmatic members of the April birthday club mentioned urge to get on the scales to measure the winter weight gain, wet roads with teeth jarring potholes and the inevitable sight of dead skunks along our roadways. Doug announced the April birthday members had a 74% participation and raised $1,585 for our club’s foundation. This news caused our club to spontaneously start singing Happy Birthday to our April born members, which also served as this week’s special music, I must say, really thin on that one President Brewster. Dan Aylward as chair of the month and day, introduced today’s speaker, Dr. Steven Drayer. Dr. Drayer specializes in robotic joint replacement surgery. Now before you start envisioning patients moving down an assembly line as numerous robots perform different tasks to replace knees and hips, that was the presentation about car assembly given a few months ago by the plant manager at the GM assembly plant. A better description as Dr. Drayer shared with us, is robotic “aided” joint replacement commanded and controlled by the skilled hands of a human surgeon. This type of joint replacement is now available in Lansing as of November of last year, before that you would have had to travel to Detroit for this type of joint replacement procedure. Dr. Drayer pointed out that each year there are approximately 1 million hip and knee replacements performed in the United States. Each of us has a 50% chance to either have a partial or full knee replacement or a hip replacement in our lifetime, with 50% of those patients requiring both procedures during their life. Typical signs that you may need a joint replacement are joint pain that causes loss of sleep, pain after long trips in a car, struggling to climb stairs or just the inability to get through a day without discomfort. One of the biggest dilemmas surgeons face with their patients is the high percentage of men and women declining the joint replacement procedure until the pain becomes unbearable and surgery becomes the only option for relief from their discomfort. Historically with respect to knee replacements, the surgeons only option was a complete replacement, where now with the robotic assisted replacements it is more common to only have a partial knee replacement, which is less invasive and can speed rehabilitation and recovery from the procedure. In addition, the robotic aided joint replacement is shown to last longer due to the precision in correctly aligning the joints more precisely by the surgeon. Also, data shows that robotic aided joint replacement reduces incision sizes, as well as complications from blood loss and risk of infection after the procedure. As Dr. Drayer closed his presentation and opened the floor to questions. Many in our club were quick to rise for questions, with many of these quick risers expressing their own joint replacement experiences. Which led me to conclude that our club is very “hip joint” to hang out at on Friday afternoons. With that said, President Brewster closed the meeting and sent us on our way to test our pothole avoidance skills as we went about the rest of our day. Tim Adam's email is: TAdams@manercpa.com |