Faceless Blog

Stitches are out!  Whoooo-hooo!  Becky and I met with Dr. Klein this morning (the surgeon who performed both of my amputations) and all of my stitches were removed.  I’ve got to go back to see him two weeks from now, just to make sure everything’s healed up correctly, but then I can finally go and get a shrinker for the left leg and get started on getting fitted for my prosthetics.  One step closer, baby.  w00t!

On Tuesday, August 24th, I underwent the most recent and hopefully last major life altering surgery in a line of life altering surgeries.  Only a few months after becoming a single amputee, I have graduated to double. 

It all happened very quickly.  I had come down with some sort of 24 hour bug on Thursday, a perfectly normal and not worth mentioning bug, except for the fact that it kept me from sleeping.  So, on Friday, I was trying to catch up on that sleep.  I had been experiencing some pain in my leg, which I wrote off as being from having my legs in the same position all night/all morning, so I was sleeping on my side.  After an hour or so of this, Becca noticed that the tips of my toes were slightly blue.  She figured that it was the prafo boot pressing weirdly on my foot, cutting off circulation.  I rolled on to my back, moved around a little, and the normal color came back.  We thought nothing else of it, and I went back to sleep.  The next morning, the toes were covered by a tubagrip wrap, so we didn’t even see them until 12:15, when we started to change the dressings on that foot, just as my mom and step-dad showed up.  At that point, the blue was from my toes to half way down my foot.  We called my vascular surgeon from way back and asked what to do.  He had us head down to the AGH Emergency Department.

There are several amusing stories that take place in the Emergency Department, but I’ll save those for another day.  To make a long story short (too late), the blue continued to travel up my foot until it eventually stopped at the top of my ankle.  By the time it reached this point, my toes were deep blue and/or purple.  I spoke with the vascular doctors (who also spoke with my old vascular surgeon) and they all agreed that I had two options:

1. Head down to Radiology and undergo a series of tests and treatments to find the blood clot (if that, indeed, was the problem). 
2. Below knee amputation.

Option number 1 seems like the obvious choice, except that every step in the process would require an IV Contrast injection.  This, unfortunately, would do serious and permanent damage to my kidneys, which would result in me being on dialysis for the rest of my life and/or needing a kidney transplant.

So, we chose option number 2.  As my doctors pointed out, you can get a prosthetic leg, but you can’t get a prosthetic kidney.  The surgery went well.  They were able to make it below knee, only an inch shorter than Leeroy, so it should support a prosthetic nicely.

That about brings you up to date.  As always, if you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them.  (Oh, and on an interesting note; the Needle Biopsy, which has held the position as the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced, has been overtaken by the amputation of my left leg.  Ow.)

Ok, I’ve obviously neglected this for a while…sorry about that.  As you may or may not know, I’ve been dealing with some health problems over the past two years.  I was diagnosed with (and beat) cancer in 2008.  I then went through physical rehab to learn how to use my shiny new wheelchair.  After that, I spent the rest of the time until now fighting the pressure wounds that I developed while I was in rehab.  The last of those horrible wounds will be gone tomorrow morning. 

During the third surgery that I went through last week, I had a skin graft put in place on the wound on my left foot.  The wound on the right heel; however, turned out to be much more serious.  The bone was infected and, in fact, they had removed over half of the heel bone before that surgery was over.  After it was done, the decision was made, between my doctors, my wife and myself to remove the foot.

The procedure is called a trans-tibial amputation, meaning that my right leg will end around the middle of the thigh.  From what I understand, the fact that I have feeling (and movement) down to my knee makes me a prime candidate for a prosthetic.  There will be a period of time where I’ll be toughening up my leg, getting it ready for the prosthetic, then, as soon as I get it, I’ll be starting therapy to teach me how to wear it, care for it and, most importantly, walk on it.

My goal is to be walking for Christmas.  It doesn’t have to be that far, but I just want to walk into my parents’ house again for the holidays.  Wish me luck.  I’ll post an update tomorrow after surgery.