Making
a big splash in life is what motivates 14-year-
old Catherine Condon.
It motivates her in the classroom, when she’s thinking
about college, when she’s contemplating a future career and
especiallywhen she’s competing in swimmeets forGeorgetown
High School and the Georgetown County YMCA.
But one year ago, Catherine—an outgoing, cheerful and
focused student-athlete—was worried that all the planning
and hard work had failed her. Regularly, her right kneecap
began popping out of place. Not only was it painful, but it
had, when Catherine was swimming, the potential to be
life-threatening.
“ e kneecap would totally move,” Catherine says. “You
could see it, and it hurt a lot. e lifeguard would have to
get me out of the pool, because I couldn’t swim anymore. I
couldn’t move my knee.”
Could a clinic help?
e anomaly could have been dismissed as simple growing
pains for a young athlete who trained hard to be the best,
but Catherine and her parents, Patrick and Amy Condon
of Pawleys Island, knew something wasn’t right. So they
took special notice when Waccamaw Orthopaedics and
Georgetown Hospital System o ered free sports injury
clinics to student-athletes last fall. e free clinics are being
o ered again this year in Murrells Inlet and in Georgetown.
At one of the 2013 clinics, the Condons met Bill Greer,
MD, a Harvard-trained and board-certi ed orthopedic
surgeon who specializes in sports medicine with
Waccamaw Orthopaedics.
“When we saw that Dr. Greer was o ering his clinics,”
Amy Condon says, “we thought it was a great time to just
get his opinion, see what he thinks. Maybe it was nothing,
but we wanted to be sure. Well, the rst thing he said was:
‘ is isn’t good. is isn’t supposed to be happening.’”
For Catherine, then only 13 years old, Dr. Greer’s initial
assessment was crushing. “It made me really nervous,
because I didn’t think I’d be able to swim again,” she says.
A er the visit to the sports injury clinic, Catherine followed
up with Dr. Greer at Waccamaw Orthopaedics to further
assess her situation. For several weeks, Catherine tried
physical therapy to correct the problem. But when that didn’t
work, Dr. Greer told her the only option le was surgery.
4
GEORGETOWN HOSPITAL SYSTEM
Doing
A er knee surgery at Waccamaw
Community Hospital, Catherine
just keeps swimming,
swimming, swimming.
