Tag: #orthopaedic

A Valid Epiphany? …

The date Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 was released as a single, and randomly scrolling through my Twitter ‘Music‘ list prompted me to post the ‘quote tweet’ below. And then down a rabbit hole on a whistle stop tour of unwanted memories my mind hurtled.

Hospital bed memories – November 23rd, 2021, scroll on …

1st Stop – Simpson Ward, The Brook General Hospital, Shooters Hill, London

November 1979, my 2nd stay in Simpson Ward, this time for 3 weeks, ‘Bone Grafting’ surgery & recovery. I wrote about it a little [ here ] the surgeon was saving my leg by removing bone from my hip to repair catastrophic damage three months earlier to my right Tibia, which I wrote about [ Here ] and [ Here ] – I’ve always loved my music, and that song was being played on the little radio I listened to in my hospital bed.

There it is, that protruding part of your hip, you know the part you sometimes catch on doorframes or other obstacles and it hurts! Well it’s a great site for ‘harvesting’ donor ‘bone’, make a sizeable incision, clamp it open to expose the ‘Iliac Crest’ … and off the surgeon goes with his hammer and chisel, hopefully collecting enough bone to replace missing bone somewhere else, in my case, my lower right leg, where bone had gone missing, I wrote about that [ Here ]

2nd Stop – Simpson Ward, The Brook General Hospital, Shooters Hill, London

Time Jump to 3 months earlier, a warm and sunny Monday morning in August, one week exactly from my 19th birthday, and in a ‘Split Second‘ my life was changed forever … I’ve told you all about that [ Here ] Warning! Graphic Content!

3rd Stop – The Present, 2022 January to Present

What a grim year! Energy crisis, Mortgage rates, Inflation, the war in Ukraine, the Tory government accelerating their 12 years and counting mission to fuck everything up they touch, voting to pump raw sewage onto our beaches, causing the £ to crash, installing more unelected leaders as PM. Even the Queen gave up, just one handshake from Liz Truss and HRH decided Enough is Enough!

My own family’s finances are in dire straits. In March the car went to try and offset mortgage payment rises. As I write this towards the end of November, the heating has just gone on, but with the thermostat set at 14.5c …

… But now (finally I hear you say) to the point of this whole post, my ‘Epiphany’ of sorts. My memory being jogged and taken on a journey by seeing the Twitter post above, the anniversary of the release of a song. All this year I have spent sleepless nights and anxious days worrying, beating myself up and feeling so bloody guilty about not contributing more financially to the household budget. I have the time, on some days the chronic pain [ I told you about Here ] is not ‘as bad’ as others. I’ve been surfing the job sites, set up google alerts & subscribed to e-mail lists, hoping maybe, just maybe I’ll see a job that I “could” do.

But November 23rd, 2022, after my memory carried me back to the places I’ve mentioned and linked to above, a voice inside my head told me not to be so hard on myself. I’m in my 63rd year and worked hard for almost 40 years despite being declared ‘disabled’ at just 19 years of age. I went to bed at 8:00pm and slept almost all night but I dreamed, I dreamt of pain & surgery, processing my early evening thoughts no doubt. When I awoke and the family were off to work and school, I went in search of an old blog post to remind me of the point where I had to give in to a disability I’d been in denial of for most of my life. I reposted it unchanged, word-for-word, as it is still relevant today. That post marks the point in time I finally admitted to myself that I was, and had been disabled for a very long time. Apart from the surgeries I’ve mentioned and linked to above, there was a ‘Spinal Fusion’ in 2000, another birthday spent in a hospital bed, this time my 40th! The damage done to my lower spine caused by 20 years of walking with a ‘corrective gait’ (limping in other words), putting uneven load on the vertebrae and discs leading to herniation and rupture. That surgery left its own side effects and complications, ‘scar tissue adhesion’ I was told a couple of years later when seeking a diagnosis for ever present sciatica and numbness in my ‘good leg!’ Then later after the 2013 MRI scans a diagnosis of ‘Peridural Fibrosis’ …

… and Traumatic Arthritis of the spine, knee and ankle! Yet I still beat myself up, feel laden with guilt that – ‘I’m NOT OUT THERE EARNING’.

So, to conclude my ramblings here on this ‘Epiphany’ of mine, probably short lived as no doubt I will revert to blaming myself for everything, but in this ‘living in the moment’ clarity … what do YOU think readers? Is my epiphany valid?

Thank you for reading.

Tibia Nonunion – Closure (or not) of sorts …

Have you ever doubted a memory? Have you, many years later come to the conclusion that you must have been mistaken, surely that didn’t happen. But then you stumble upon something, (and I’ll tell you at the end of this post) that confirms that old memory – and in this case it has made it even more shocking for me!

Back in August 1979, I made a real mess of my right leg. 3 months later, after 6 weeks or so in hospital, bed ridden on ‘bone traction‘ and the dreaded ‘Braun Frame‘ … then home with a full plaster ‘big toe to bollocks‘ as it was known and weighing in at 14lbs! I couldn’t walk without crutches as the plaster (and my shattered leg) was deemed ‘non load bearing’, indeed the occasional experiment (or slip of a crutch) resulting in ‘load bearing’ was a very unpleasant and painful experience!

So, here I was in late November that same year, at the orthopaedic out patients department, dropped off by a good samaritan, long time friend of the family called Alf Challis. I limped my way on those two old style full length wooden ‘armpit’ crutches to the plaster room where that evil one stone dead weight, hard as your house walls, heavy cocoon was split by an electric reciprocating saw blade that was not at all pleasant as it buzzed its way passed the many scars underneath. Into a wheelchair with injured leg resting on outstretched supporting board and onto the x-ray department, then back to the waiting room to await the call from Mr Ahmed, the orthopaedic surgeon into who’s care I had been placed some 3 months earlier.

Now, here I was, just 19 years old, 3 months of hospitalisation and unable to walk, work, do anything much fun. Eager to move on, put this thing behind me etc, etc. I’d watched the progress of many others like me who I’d met on the ward while I was there. I’d seen how these things progress – Full length non load bearing plaster to ‘below the knee’ and load bearing, get that knee joint moving again, actually start to walk again, albeit with a plaster cast but hey, actually walking again. I’d dreamt of not having that solid mass constricting my leg at nighttime when simply rolling over in your sleep resulted in a harsh and painful awakening as the plaster crushed my good leg or worse – my balls!

So, I was expecting good positive news, then in I went to Mr Ahmed’s consulting room. Mr Ahmed was not known for his pleasant bedside manner. He hardly spoke, and when he did it was in a thick accent. He in no way invited questions. As I was wheeled in there he was standing, facing away from me, staring at the x-rays clipped onto one of those old school ‘light box’ units fixed to the wall. He turned to look at my outstretched leg, looked back at the x-rays then walked over to me. He placed his left hand just under my knee and gripped the top of my shin bone (Tibia) above where the fractures were, he looked at the x-rays, shook his head, looked at my leg, placed his right hand below the fracture sites, looked again at the x-ray as if to get co-ordinates and locate what he was looking for. He then tightened his grip with both hands and proceeded to twist in opposite directions and my leg snapped! I nearly went through the ceiling!

“It is no good … It is not healing” he said, “you will have bone grafting … I will take bone from your hip and if in 3 months time it’s the same I will take bone from the other hip, then if no healing after 3 months, a rib”. He was talking about a timeline consisting of 3 month increments, no end point just a 3 monthly cycle punctuated by surgery.

So, there I was alone in that room with Mr Ahmed, in shock from the pain, but more so from the devastating news that I was back at square one! Back in the day we didn’t question or challenge these people, they were ‘surgeons’, pretty much god like, the attending staff nurses on the ward rounds would look at you sternly with a ‘speak when you are spoken to’, silent, compliant respect had to be shown. I said nothing. But I was devastated, and I felt sick at the prospect of Bone Grafting because I had witnessed the post operative and 2 week hospital stay recovery during my first spell in hospital.

A guy arrived called Keith, he was on crutches, non load bearing, he was put in the bed next to me and explained how he’d broken his leg some time before and it wasn’t healing. He was to have surgery, a bone graft the following day. Keith was a Fireman, early 20’s. A really nice bloke, down to earth and obviously tough as nails, no wimp, no soft touch, not afraid of pain (and believe me we met some men that were total babies in that ward) … Part of my shock and fear in that consulting room with Mr Ahmed, was the flashback playing in my head of Keith a couple of months earlier, Keith was also under the care of Mr Ahmed, and Keith really suffered post operatively, and I remember the nursing staff comforting him and explaining just how painful bone grafting was. Keith took it like a man, he was indeed tough, but we could all see how he was suffering … Would I be able to take it?

… I started this post asking if memories can be wrong, imagined? The account above is from way back at the end of 1979! To be honest, I have doubted myself so much over the whole “He broke my leg again” account I’ve told (some) not many people over the years, but then;

Just a week or so ago at the time of writing (August 2021) some 42 years later, I was watching a YouTube video posted by ‘Talking With Docs‘ … they were talking about Tiger Woods injuries and I was interested to hear that his fractured Tibia was not unlike my own injury back in 1979. Then they used the term ‘Nonunion’ to describe the ‘not healing’ comment Mr Ahmed had used as a laymen’s term for me back then. I’d never heard that term and went ‘Googling’ … There’s an image below illustrating a ‘Test’ for ‘Tibia Nonunion’ … low an behold, there in that illustration is precisely what old Mr Ahmed did to my leg that day, without warning, no numbing, no pain relief, no apology!

… Why did I find it so shocking? Because it confirmed my recollection was correct. I’d rather hoped and decided internally long ago that I was mistaken.

But no!

This ‘Bone / Skeletal’ traction confines you to your hospital bed – in my case for 6 weeks!
The Braun Frame for 6 weeks bed bound, and with Bone/Skeletal traction pin through the ankle in my case.

And here in the image below, top left is the illustration Google presented me when searching ‘Tibia Nonunion’ … and what prompted me to compose this post as some form of ‘closure’ on my own experience of ‘Nonunion’ which is ironically failure of bones to ‘close’ !

Top left the ‘Shocking Twist’ in my own story!

I may talk more of my experience of ‘Bone Grafting’, I may not. I’d like to talk more about how the 19 year old me was affected psychologically at that time, I think in many ways that is more important. For instance – I was given no explanation as to why my bones had failed to heal, and I felt like a failure myself. I had taken the calcium pills, the iron pills (as i’d been diagnosed as ‘anaemic’ due to the massive blood loss) and I’d stuck to the ‘no load bearing’ so as not to disturb those re-knitting bone pieces. So here was another revelation and explanation after 42 years, in the YouTube video, the doctors spoke about soft tissue damage and compromised blood supply hindering the bone healing process, and I had suffered both, including a severed artery. At 19, I had chastised myself for not healing faster, I’d seen others back walking 6 months before me. I was very hard on myself and have been ever since, but thanks to the Talking With Docs video I’ve finally learned that something else wasn’t really my fault, and that is ‘closure’ of sorts.

Thank you for reading 🙂

Bone Graft Harvesting – For the non squeamish;