BoxRec

silkov wrote:How are the legs now?... I mashed up my foot and ankle years ago in a Motorbike crash and had to have pins and stuff put in to hold it all together!

They're serviceable, but still limited in their range of motion, probably from adhesions between the thigh muscles and the large bone calluses that formed around the fracture sites, mainly the femoral ones - the lower legs were broken in more places but don't form the big calluses like the femurs do. The Stanford U. orthopedists treating me actually have a rather mixed view of putting in artificial stuff like plates and screws - they say it can be useful for short-term stabilization, but can actually interfere with the natural healing process and cause other complications down the road - so in my case it was mostly external splinting and let nature take its course. So my X-rays are uglier-looking than they might be had they used the bionic plate & screw method, but aside from aesthetics the bones have healed quite well. I'll never have sexy legs again, but given the severity of the injuries (especially to the left leg - they were real close to amputating that one, because for the first 24 hours or so they couldn't detect a pulse down in the foot area, due to the massive blood leaking into the tissues and resulting swelling and pressure, a.k.a. "compartment syndrome") I'm glad just to have legs - period. Knee joints are somewhat looser and poppy/creaky, but paradoxically, the bones shattering around them probably saved the knees from much more major damage. Gotta put 'em up a lot during the day and limit my activities somewhat, but all in all, better off than I thought I'd be during the worst of it a year ago.

I should add a bit about the circumstances - I said vaguely "car accident", but it wasn't anything like driving stupid or drunk, at least not on my part. No, I was out getting my evening walk in, crossing a nearby busy street, light's red, walk signal is on, and some 17-year-old kid driving daddy's SUV comes outta nowhere, blasting up the middle of 3 lanes (which happens to be clear), not seeing the red light, not seeing the stopped cars in the lanes on either side, not seeing the several cars that just turned left from the cross street (which I had to wait for before getting the walk signal) and just creams me. Bad as it was, it could've been a lot worse. And yes, my lawyer is on the case - not gonna be like the lady that spilled scalding McDonald's coffee on herself and wound up with millions (which everybody knows about and thinks is the way things always go - she actually wound up with less than a million after the judgment was appealed), but the "Vike saves for his dream house in the country" fund should be getting a nice donation sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Oh, and thanks for the kind words, Mr. Jaclem, sir. (And everybody else). Guess I'm just too ornery to go down that easy ... my relatives say I'm like a cat, already used up at least a couple lives, not sure how many more I've got left - one of these days it'll be the last one. But not today.

livingstone cole wrote:You've just really made me appreciate how cool having legs is. Jesus, sounds like you came close there buddy. Ain't modern surgical procedures brilliant?

Yes, "Please don't take my legs -- I'm really quite attached to them, you see..."

All in all, coulda been worse - one more foot further into the road and I wouldn't be typing this (or anything else).

But anyway, if you have a finite budget for expressions of concern, please send them to the author of the thread, Mr. Decagon - after all, I'm mostly out of the woods, whereas he sounds like he's still got some ways to go.

Any pretty nurses around to give you a spongebath today, Dec? I always wanted the pretty ones to not worry about me so much and instead give *themselves* a spongebath (with me there to help them with those hard-to reach places, goes without saying), but they always seemed to have some lame-ass excuse ready, like "I'd lose my job if they caught me" or "what do you think this is -- a brothel with doctors?"

I think next to losing my vision, losing my legs would be the absolute worst thing imaginable! It's really good to hear that you did not lose them!

I do hope things improve for you soon as its cleary been a rough time for you to say the least.I hope that the number of posts gives you some cheer - even the stupid ones.take care with the medication friend. On a happy little note..a year ago this month I was told i may have only 6+ months on this earth if the chemo therapy drugs didn't work.clearly they did. last time i saw the consultant he started the conversation with " Still here then Mr Snell" didn't know if to thump or thank him !!!...seeing this happy chappy in 3 weeks and await his next quip.

so all the best and take each day as it comes

Rob

Eric the Viking wrote:

silkov wrote:How are the legs now?... I mashed up my foot and ankle years ago in a Motorbike crash and had to have pins and stuff put in to hold it all together!

They're serviceable, but still limited in their range of motion, probably from adhesions between the thigh muscles and the large bone calluses that formed around the fracture sites, mainly the femoral ones - the lower legs were broken in more places but don't form the big calluses like the femurs do. The Stanford U. orthopedists treating me actually have a rather mixed view of putting in artificial stuff like plates and screws - they say it can be useful for short-term stabilization, but can actually interfere with the natural healing process and cause other complications down the road - so in my case it was mostly external splinting and let nature take its course. So my X-rays are uglier-looking than they might be had they used the bionic plate & screw method, but aside from aesthetics the bones have healed quite well. I'll never have sexy legs again, but given the severity of the injuries (especially to the left leg - they were real close to amputating that one, because for the first 24 hours or so they couldn't detect a pulse down in the foot area, due to the massive blood leaking into the tissues and resulting swelling and pressure, a.k.a. "compartment syndrome") I'm glad just to have legs - period. Knee joints are somewhat looser and poppy/creaky, but paradoxically, the bones shattering around them probably saved the knees from much more major damage. Gotta put 'em up a lot during the day and limit my activities somewhat, but all in all, better off than I thought I'd be during the worst of it a year ago.

I should add a bit about the circumstances - I said vaguely "car accident", but it wasn't anything like driving stupid or drunk, at least not on my part. No, I was out getting my evening walk in, crossing a nearby busy street, light's red, walk signal is on, and some 17-year-old kid driving daddy's SUV comes outta nowhere, blasting up the middle of 3 lanes (which happens to be clear), not seeing the red light, not seeing the stopped cars in the lanes on either side, not seeing the several cars that just turned left from the cross street (which I had to wait for before getting the walk signal) and just creams me. Bad as it was, it could've been a lot worse. And yes, my lawyer is on the case - not gonna be like the lady that spilled scalding McDonald's coffee on herself and wound up with millions (which everybody knows about and thinks is the way things always go - she actually wound up with less than a million after the judgment was appealed), but the "Vike saves for his dream house in the country" fund should be getting a nice donation sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Oh, and thanks for the kind words, Mr. Jaclem, sir. (And everybody else). Guess I'm just too ornery to go down that easy ... my relatives say I'm like a cat, already used up at least a couple lives, not sure how many more I've got left - one of these days it'll be the last one. But not today.

I'm glad you're on the mend, my thing happened almost 20 years ago and at the time the docs couldnt decide whether to leave the pins and clips in my foot and ankle or take them out, I had varying opinions climaxing with one of the last docs saying to me that they should have been taken out but they had been left in too long to take out easily now.
Recently I discovered one has broken in half and another one has worked its way up to the side of my foot so I can now feel it under my skin which is weird. I've been told that it'd be quite simple now for them to take this one out but I'm not too keen as I hate hospitals and you never know about picking up an infection or some such horror these days...
8)

robert.snell1 wrote:I do hope things improve for you soon as its cleary been a rough time for you to say the least.I hope that the number of posts gives you some cheer - even the stupid ones.take care with the medication friend. On a happy little note..a year ago this month I was told i may have only 6+ months on this earth if the chemo therapy drugs didn't work.clearly they did. last time i saw the consultant he started the conversation with " Still here then Mr Snell" didn't know if to thump or thank him !!!...seeing this happy chappy in 3 weeks and await his next quip.

so all the best and take each day as it comes

Rob

Heres hoping that you're still here when that doc is playing a harp in the clouds mate... keep punching!...

silkov wrote:

robert.snell1 wrote:I do hope things improve for you soon as its cleary been a rough time for you to say the least.I hope that the number of posts gives you some cheer - even the stupid ones.take care with the medication friend. On a happy little note..a year ago this month I was told i may have only 6+ months on this earth if the chemo therapy drugs didn't work.clearly they did. last time i saw the consultant he started the conversation with " Still here then Mr Snell" didn't know if to thump or thank him !!!...seeing this happy chappy in 3 weeks and await his next quip.

so all the best and take each day as it comes

Rob

Heres hoping that you're still here when that doc is playing a harp in the clouds mate... keep punching!...

Well said Silk.
I second that . All the best to you Mr Snell.

Decagon - get well soon.

If it makes you feel any better, in the last month I've had a stricture taken care of, twice. It's basically a 15 minute procedure where a tube is stuck up your pecker to stretch it out. Talk about painful....not fun at all.

I was in a coma for 4 days and in the hospital for almost three weeks around 5-6 years ago. It took me a week before I could walk a half hour. I was broke to shit....a tube coming out of my lung, broken wrist in two places, fractured skull, fractured pelvis, compound fractures of two fingers, 5 fractured ribs....what else....on a Morphine drip. I hurt like hell. I hate hospitals and always make sure to tell the doctors I hate them and the hospital they work for - until I'm better and then I thank them. That accident was a life changer for sure.

Here in Thailand there is no Vicodin and the doctors do not give you anything stronger than Tylenol unless you need Morphine, which by the way is great. I've got pure codeine and morphine tablets which I refrain from taking unless I'm in agony which is every so often.

Here's to healthier times, Dec.

Hope you're on the mend.

robert.snell1 wrote:On a happy little note..a year ago this month I was told i may have only 6+ months on this earth if the chemo therapy drugs didn't work.clearly they did. last time i saw the consultant he started the conversation with " Still here then Mr Snell" didn't know if to thump or thank him !!!...seeing this happy chappy in 3 weeks and await his next quip.

Here's to another too-ornery-to-die-that-quickly b*stard - may you have many more such "still here?" conversations in years to come.