In 2023, Khris Emken was crying in pain at a Texas water park, unable to walk back to her hotel room. By summer 2025, she was conquering stairs at the Grand Canyon.

The difference? Two knee replacement surgeries that gave the 66-year-old her life back.

“I can’t tell you. He has made my life so good,” Emken says of orthopaedic surgeon Beau Kildow, MD, who replaced both her knees in summer 2024.

When simple tasks became mountains

Emken’s journey with knee pain began in 2017. What started as manageable arthritis gradually became debilitating.

“My son has a two-story house, and I would have to crawl upstairs because I couldn’t get my knees to bend correctly,” she says.

By 2021, she was getting cortisone shots every three months to help reduce inflammation caused by arthritis and ease pain. 

Then, during a Christmas 2023 resort trip, she needed a scooter to get around. At the Texas water park, she couldn’t even make the walk back to her room.

“I had to sit on every chair back, and I was in so much pain I was crying,” she says.

Eventually, the injections stopped working.

“Somewhere at the end, it was like, ‘This isn’t doing any good,’” she says.

Finding the right doctor

Emken chose Dr. Kildow for what she calls “the dumbest reason” – they both went to Millard schools. But when she met him, she knew she’d made the right choice.

“When I walked into that office, it was like, ‘Oh, my God, he knows all about knees,’” she says. “He’s an expert. This is his one and only field. And I just felt so comfortable with him.”

Dr. Kildow saw a patient with severe arthritis who wasn’t quite ready for surgery.

“She was limping and in a lot of pain,” Dr. Kildow says. “When I met her, she wasn’t ready for surgery, so we did some injections to try to make her comfortable.”

Getting ready for surgery

To prepare for surgery and optimize her results, Emken dieted and lost 50 pounds. 

“When patients take steps to improve their health because they’re motivated to recover well after surgery, they are generally more likely to experience positive outcomes” Dr. Kildow says.

By age 65, Emken reached her breaking point.

“Look, Doc, I am so bad now that I’m going to have to get a wheelchair because I cannot walk, and the shots aren’t doing anything,” she told Dr. Kildow.

Dr. Kildow looks for two main factors when deciding if a patient is ready: pain and debilitation, with X-ray evidence showing bone-on-bone disease.

“At that point, knee replacement is an option,” he says. “And likely the best option.”

Two surgeries

Dr. Kildow chose to operate on Emken’s right knee first in June 2024, even though her left knee hurt more.

“Her right knee had a more severe deformity,” he says. “I wanted her to have a relatively stable knee on that side before she tried to rehab on the left side.”

What happened next amazed Emken. When nurses helped her stand for the first time after surgery, she was pain-free.

“I stood on that leg and there was no pain,” she said. “It took a while to get used to using the leg, but there was no pain.”

Two months later, Dr. Kildow replaced her left knee.

Recovery and support

Throughout her recovery, Emken credits an ice machine and her husband Mark’s support for her success.

“My husband was awesome because he kept the ice chest filled with ice,” she said. “If you can get an ice machine and keep ice on your knee, that’s a lifesaver.”

After Emken’s positive experience with Dr. Kildow, she and Mark selected him for Mark’s hip replacement. Dr. Kildow says he often treats multiple family members.

“One of the most rewarding parts of this job is not only taking care of patients, but their families as well,” he says.

Life after surgery

Today, Emken lives a life she couldn’t have imagined. She recently traveled to Utah, walked around the Grand Canyon and rode rides at Disneyland with her granddaughter.

“Here’s a 66-year-old lady going up and down these rides,” she says, laughing.

Before surgery, shopping meant finding places to sit and rest. Now she spends entire days at fabric stores for her quilting hobby.

“I couldn’t even shop without having to find a place to sit,” she says. “Now I go and spend all day looking at everything.”

Recovery timeline

Dr. Kildow says most patients experience the majority of their recovery within the first three months, though fine-tuning may continue for months.

“By about a year, patients should be much more active with a lot less pain,” he says.

Modern knee replacements are built to last. With new materials, Dr. Kildow tells patients their implant will likely last significantly longer than we once thought. 

What really matters

While patients may hear about new, “minimally invasive” knee procedures and robotics, Dr. Kildow says the data shows no clear advantage.

“There’s no approach or robot to date that has proven any better outcomes in knee replacement surgery,” he said. “It mostly comes down to choosing a surgeon or a place that you feel comfortable with.”

For Emken, that comfort led to trust in a surgeon who gave her back the ability to live fully.

“I got my life back,” she said. “When anyone asks me, I say, ‘Oh, yes, it’s worth everything.’”