THE REMOVAL
On April 1, 2010, Emery had surgery that could have ended his career. Really, it should have.
He was suffering from a condition in his hip called avascular necrosis (AVN). The bone at the head of his femur, which fits into to the hip, was dead because of a lack of bloodflow and the more he used it, the more it flattened.
“People would say it’s a square peg in a round hole,” said Duke University’s Dr. David Ruch, who performed the surgery.
It was painful. And it wasn’t getting better.
Emery played 29 games with the Flyers during the 2009-10 season, going 16-11-1 with a 2.64 goals-against average. His hip was slowly deteriorating the entire time.
“Once it collapses, you’re done,” Ruch said. “It was a critical time for him. He could have played on that season with the Flyers and it would have collapsed and that would have been it.”
The solution wasn’t any more pleasant. The corrective surgery replaces the dead bone with living bone -- in this case, bone from the middle section of Emery’s fibula. Surgery meant the removal of dead bone from Emery’s hip and the extraction of healthy bone from his leg. It also involves cutting through muscle just to get to the femur.
“You can imagine, for a hockey goalie, that wouldn’t be good,” Ruch said.
