Horse-loving-mum of four gets back in the saddle ready to enjoy her busy family life again
With four children aged between eight and 13, four horses, two dogs, four cats and eight chickens, it’s fair to say that Katie Gilmour, 49, from The Haven, West Sussex has a busy and active lifestyle. As an accomplished journalist and podcaster who thrives on being busy and physically fit, Katie developed instability in her right knee in 2021 while running with her daughter and their family pony in a Showing class. Later diagnosed with patella tendinopathy, Katie’s right knee slowly began to unravel and become more unstable. A subsequent accident in early 2024 that involved a patella dislocation led to surgery later that year. Despite the surgery, Katie’s knee was still compromised by a lack of cartilage and the daily pain was wearing and limiting her usual activities.
Following treatment with Arthrosamid® in January 2025, Katie is now back on full throttle, recovering well and back to her beloved horses, walking the dogs and on the school run. Here, Katie tells us how knee pain impacted her family life, her experience of treatment with Arthrosamid® and why she thinks it’s been a “Game changer”.
“I can distinctly remember the moment that my knee issues started. I had taken my daughter and our wonderful pony, Clover, to a show in the summer of 2021. My daughter was a little shy of the judge and asked me to run with her. The ground was rock hard, unlevel and I was wearing heavy country boots, and despite being fit and active, I felt a tearing in my knee and heard an ‘internal ‘pop, pop, pop’. Being a typical horsewoman, I ignored it, but it didn’t go away and my knee got progressively unstable and painful. Eventually, I sought physio and was referred to an orthopaedic consultant, who diagnosed patella tendinopathy.
“Despite shockwave and steroids into my knee, things got worse in February 2024 when my knee had a catastrophic injury. Having just ridden my hot Portuguese horse in a clinic, I was standing chatting when my dogs knocked into my knee, sending my knee cap spinning to the other side, tearing pretty much everything inside my knee in the process. It was incredibly painful and came at a time when we were in the middle of renovating and rebuilding our house. After 11 weeks of further dislocations and subluxations, it became obvious that it wouldn’t heal by itself and I underwent an MPFL repair and arthroscopy. The arthroscopy showed significant loss of cartilage, and the pain I experienced was bone on bone. Despite the surgery, I began to walk with a limp and still experienced too much pain to live my ‘normal’ life. Having been so active all of my life, I found being confined to little exercise damaging to my mental health and wanted to resolve the pain and stiffness without further surgery.
“I’ve been around horses most of my life and spent a portion of my adult life working with them. I’d come across a treatment used by vets called Arthramid® and seen the positive effects it can have on horses with joint issues first hand. I even asked my vet if he could give me Arthramid! He thought I was joking. I actually wasn’t, and started researching the equivalent for humans - a hydrogel injection called Arthrosamid®, backed by scientific data and manufactured by the same company.
“I found Dr George Bownes, Consultant in Musculoskeletal, Sport and Exercise Medicine at The Fortius Clinic. He was extremely positive about my suitability for the treatment, and, in January 2025, I had the injection and followed the six-week rehabilitation programme. This included two weeks of rest, and then a gradual build-up of mobility and physio-led exercise over the remaining weeks.