Dennis H wrote:BrokenolMarine wrote:Since my Disney Hippo incident last September, I haven't exactly been mobile.
Wait, wait, wait........what? As a relative newb I've gathered you've been healing up from something but that comment needs more details. Please don't take my comment as inconsiderate but your above comment more than peeked my interest. What the heck happened?
Sorry.... I forget the event doesn't stand out for everyone like it does for me...
I have been using a therapeutic hot springs hot tub for pain management for about ten years. Every three or four months I drain the spa completely, and then scrub the "tub" with a citrus cleaner to insure it stays clear and clean. We change the filters and flush all the lines, then repeat process, spraying on the citric spray and letting the sun and citric spray do their thing for a bit. This time the boss came out and said, "While the TUB is soaking in the orange aide, I'm going to spray down the deck with bleach and water and kill the algae growing there. There was some stuff growing in the shade in the corner of the deck that could have starred in the Stephen King movie.
Miss Tina told me to head in the house. "You have trouble standing normally with that Fake Knee... this is going to get slicker than Goose .. ah... snot."
I look out a half hour later, and she is back cleaning the tub of the spa... that is MY job, one of the few that the boss still lets me do around the place with my physical restrictions, so I tap on the picture window to see if she want's my help. She doesn't hear me. I yell thru the window.. No joy.
I open the door to the deck and step out with my left foot as I ask, "Do you want some he..."
Here is where the Disney Hippo in the Pink Tutu comes into play. In the span of a fraction of a second...
My left foot contacts the deck that STILL has bleach water on it. It IS slicker than owl snot.
That foot shoots forward like an NHRA rail in the National Championships.
The right foot is still inside the house, 6" above the deck on the floor.
I am hovering above the deck like that hippo in the tutu, but nowhere near as gracefully, for .0005 of a second.
I slam down on the deck landing on the knee, but rolling to my left shoulder to protect my head. (Instinct from training.)
In that fraction of a second....
My leg breaks, The femur, just above the knee, cleanly.
I HEAR the snap, in my head it's as loud as a fishing rod snapping with a trophy bass on the other end.
My right foot, still in the house, turns 90 degrees out of alignment, causing a long spiral fracture up the leg, from knee to hip and pieces break off.
(My surgeon calls the break 1 in 10,000)
As I fall fully out onto the deck I pull the foot out of the house and the door shuts. 270 pounds striking the deck cause the empty spa to HOP.
That gets Tina's attention and she turns and yells at me for falling, "You just couldn't stay in the house, could you?"
She sees I'm in pain and wants to turn me over and check to see if I'm hurt. I tell her not to touch me, the leg is broken...
How can you know that she asks. I heard it, felt it, and the foot is pointing in the wrong direction.
--- Here is the clean break just above the fake knee ---
To shorten the story, Short ambulance ride to the farmer's field. 15 minute Med Flight to the trauma center. The drive in the ambulance would have taken over an hour if we caught all the lights and didn't hit any traffic. Hour and a half minimum otherwise. I had a one month stay in the hospital.
A month at home of rest and then three months of PT. Six months .... From falling to walking. NO weight bearing at all for two months.
--- surgery took five hours give or take. In the xray you can see the zipper line of staples on the left side, the steel plate and steel screws, and the zip tie cables. I got lucky. The surgeon who did the repair was HEAD of ortho at the Medical College of Virginia and wouldn't let anyone else do the surgery. I had to wait FOUR days to get the repair done to get the blood thinners out of my system and have a cardiac stress test done... but it was worth it... top surgeons do top notch work.
I'm not that good at it yet due to the September injuries, and they tell me it might be a while. I can see my pistol range berm and small range house from the living room's back windows, but couldn't get there.
