damnjoel

Long story short, i crushed my heel in a downhill mountain bike crash. compound fracture. had emergency surgery within 7 hours of crash. I stayed in that Hospital for 3 weeks away from home. i got a staph infection and it went unchecked while trying to find & transfer to a local doctor. Long story. A local wound care nurse was changing my bandages (peep hole in cast) and she reached the bone/steel plate while cleaning the wound. She basically said Holy F, you need a surgeon TODAY. I got admited that same day and this is where things got interesting. Within hours i had a top bone doc, a plastic surgeon and a vascular surgeon in the OR working on me. Thru another 3 week stay in the Hospital, I went thru 4 debridement surgeries and then a free flap surgery.

It has been a long road. I can't really separate the heel fracture from he infection complications - it was all just one big ordeal. I was off work for 8+ months with probably 3-4 of those months in bed or on the couch. Thank the Lord for my retired grand parents. I could not have made it without them. when i did go back to work, i was in a wheelchair. then a walker, then crutches then in alot of pain trying to just walk on my own. Then i jsut stayed in a pain ridden state for 2-3 years. It just hurt to walk. I limped and whinced in pain everystep.

Then, ya know, things just gradually got better. My crash was in 2001 and today, sometimes, you'd never know i had a problem. I still have good days and bad days but the good days still out number the bad days. I can't go to the Zoo and walk for hours without limping by the end of the day. I can't do hard manual labor with up and down squats without paying for it the next day. Sometime, without reason, my foot aches and i limp alittle. But most of the time, i feel like i have a good quality of life.

I hope all of you heelies can hang in there. This is a very tough injury. It will bring you to very low lows. You are looking at YEARS to recover, especially with bad, compound fractures. There are NO 6 week recoveries. But in the end, you will have your life back. I have not told this story in a long time. There was no internet back then for me. I thought i was all alone. I had no idea what was happening or what lye ahead for me. THere were many weird happenings in my 6 weeks in those two hospitals. I remember waking up and seeing that thing sown to my leg. I freeked out. They didnt prepare me for that (in laymens terms). I had JP drains everywhere. in the hospital, there was a small wire attached to the newly spliced blood supply so they could hook it up to a speak and listen to the pulse of the new blood vessels. If that splice failed, they would have to do that surgery again. I dont think i pooped for a month from all the drugs. I was on a vancomycin drip for 6 weeks thru a central line. I had wound care nurses coming to my home everday to apply new bandages. After a month of being home, i was instructed to get in the shower and wash my transplant growth thing. i was totally afraid of it at first. i didnt even want to look at it. The idea was to massage it and stumilate blood flow to the lower areas. the skin graph (mesh looking surface) fell off almost immediately cause there was not enough blood flow to grow the skin. The graph bleed like a and always caused a pretty graphic scene in the bathtub. but that was a healthy thing. I needed blood to circulate thur all that new tissue.

All in all, the doctors and nurses were amazing. They really cared about me and i am soo appreciative of them and the healthcare profession. They saved my foot.

Hang in there kids. You will make it.