CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Elective surgeries will resume in Illinois next week as part of Governor JB Pritzker’s easing of some restrictions of his stay-at-home order.
"Even sitting here right now I’m in pain. It’s a struggle," said 23-year old Ryan Mullarkey of upstate New York.
He'll be coming to Chicago next week to have a cadaver meniscus put into one of his knees to ease the pain he's been in for a few years.
"My bone-on-bone rubbing, hurts me to sit and walk," Mullarkey said.
Mullarkey said he's had two surgery dates postponed because of the state of Illinois' restrictions against elective surgeries the past several weeks.
"I understood, you know, with everything going on. You don’t want people to get sick and all of that, so I understood, but obviously, selfishly I wanted it to happen," he said.
The man from near Albany, New York said he's not worried at all about getting surgery now.
"I feel as though it’ll be safe. If everyone’s nice and sanitary, there’s nothing that can go wrong," Mullarkey said.
Mullarkey's surgery will be performed by sports medicine surgeon Dr. Brian Cole of Midwest Orthopedics at Rush. Dr. Cole said resumption of elective surgeries will mean added precautions like testing all patients for COVID-19, everyone involved wearing masks, and more separation between surgeries.
"I feel safer in the hospital, in my office, and the operating room, than I do walking to the grocery store," Dr. Cole said.
Dr. Cole said there's been a 20-30 percent backlog in elective surgeries during the Governor's stay-at-home order.
"What will happen is we’ll be doing, we are doing fewer cases per day. We’re doing fewer operating rooms per day and we’ll have to extend our hours and do shifts and we’ll have to work Saturdays," he said.
Still, Dr. Cole also said that with fewer people outside and active these days, there's also fewer people suffering injuries requiring surgery, for now.
"The fact is fewer people are out playing organized sports. They’re not being as active, unfortunately. There are less accidents, high-level injury traumas at least for the time being," he said.
Dr. Cole said he's looking forward to getting back into the operating room more to help ease people's suffering. For the past several weeks, he's been limited to performing surgeries that were "life-threatening or limb-threatening."
He said returning to the operating room was very emotional for him.
"That’s like gasoline for us. That’s the fuel that keeps all of us going. We always say, it’s not about the income, it’s about the outcome. It's a very tough thing to do without," he said.
Dr. Cole acknowledges some people may be leery of getting elective surgeries right now. He said the question they need to determine is how much pain and suffering they're willing to endure before eventually getting what they need.
Dr. Cole is the managing partner of Midwest Orthopedics at Rush, the "second or third largest practice in the Midwest" with about 50 physicians.