Tightening the Screws

Yesterday I spent an awful long time in hospital waiting to find out a date when the fixator will be off. I had an 3 lots of x-rays and saw the dressings nurse but I spent the most time waiting to see Mr Dennison. Apparently Mr Dennison is one of the best Orthopaedics for trauma and external fixators.
I was called into see him and he was a lovely gentleman, I felt at ease straight away.

We looked at the x-rays and he explained that whilst the x-ray of my leg straight on looked perfect, the x-ray of that shows the side of my leg doesn't look so good. Basically, the smaller bone that was broken is healing up well but the bigger, shin bone, has come out of place and hasn't healed at all. I was gutted. I suppose I had all my hopes on coming home to Sheffield in March and now it looks like that's not going to happen. When Mr Dennison said that we'd have to move the bone into place, I panicked; I had visions of having my leg reset or another operation, but it just meant that the cage had to be tightened which would push the pins, and the bone, into a better position.

Mr Dennison got out a torque wrench and started tightening the bolts on my cage. It felt a little uncomfortable when he was tightening it but the real pain came when I stood up and my leg crunched the bone together. I was a bit wobbly walking with my crutches but it got easier the more I walked. I went for another x-ray and the difference in my leg was immediate. We could see that the frame was pushing my bones straight so it would heal properly.

My parents asked if they could see the first x-ray taken when I was admitted to hospital. I was so jacked up on morphine at the time so I was curious to see too. The x-ray, however, made me want to be sick. Although my leg was straight, my foot was at a right angle to the left- it was disgusting. Mr Dennison finished off the consultation by saying the fixation will be on for 6 months in a worst case scenario but as I'm young and don't smoke, hopefully it'll be off before then.

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.