Good News at last!!

Hey everyone, I have some good news :)

I went to the hospital on the 20th of June and had my x-rays and met up with the consultant to discuss my progress. It was agreed that the bones had meshed together quite well and now was the next part of the process- to slacken the frame off.

(This might be a bit awkward to explain, but I'll try my best.)

Above picture is my leg with my Illizarov Frame. The green arrows point to my rods which are attached to the rings. Basically these are all screwed together to hold the bone steady so it heals straight and everything fuses together as it should.

This is a better look at the rod, you can see the nuts holding the rings straight (meaning the pins hold the bone).

At the hospital, I had these nuts slackened off so the rings are free standing and the bone can freely move.

If you look closely, you can see the nuts aren't screwed down. I remained like this for one week and then had the rods and nuts taken out completely.

I'm now being held together with cable ties. The ties are there mainly for peace of mind as it's a bit unnerving to only have pins in your leg.


We now have to watch my leg and make sure it doesn't bend or move and all being well, the pins will come out on the 9th of July!!!

Hairy leg no more!

When I first got fixatored, I hadn't shaved for about 2 weeks and my legs weren't looking too bad. 2 months down the line, however, there's have got a bit hairy...

I wasn't too bothered at first and made a joke about it but in all honesty, it was starting to get me down. Everytime I showed my fixator to someone, I was embarrassed about the amount of leg hair.
Luckily for me, JML came to the rescue with their product 'Finishing Touch'. The JML Finishing Touch is essentially a mini shaver and due to it's small nature and angled head, it's perfect for getting round all the bars and pins in my leg.

Here are the results; 

Not bad huh? I'm really happy. The loss of hair has taken away lots of dead skin and itchiness with it and I can apply cream easier. My leg still feels a bit prickly but no one really feels my leg so as long as it looks clean shaven, I don't care.

The return of the screaming

It's 00.28, I'm lying in bed trying to go to sleep and I think the best thing to write about right now is the nightmares and flashbacks. I thought only soldiers in war only experienced trauma but I experienced a trauma of falling. When someone has a trauma of this kind, it takes them two years to fully recover. I'm only on week 5 of 104 of recovery so my accident is still very prominent in my mind, which in turn has taken a toll on my mental health. I suffer from flashbacks and nightmares as a result of my injury.

The nightmares are definitely the worst and very night I have an anxiety attack about sleeping. In my dreams, I relive the experience of having my leg reset over and over and over. The background to my dreams are the shouts of the lady who was next to me in the ward. Her shouts were always the same; "mamma help me, mamma save me, what are you doing to me? Somebody help me, they are trying to kill me". There's nothing else to the dream, it simply repeats until my mind moves onto something else. I don't normally wake until noon and when I do, I'm exhausted from the night.

The flashbacks, whilst not as bad, still take me by surprise. When my ice skate was removed by paramedics the day I fell, I let out a scream (and my friends will testify that it was a piercing scream) because I was in so much pain. Sometimes, I'll be watching tv or eating my dinner or doing anything when my mind will take me back to that point and for a few seconds, all I can hear is that scream. I'm helpless until its over and it's terrifying.

It's possibly that I'll need Cognitive behavioural therapy but the medication I'm on does increase anxiety and nightmares so I'm hoping my mind will settle down.