Here’s a thread from last year by someone who had an amputation.
:smack: that took me a minute. You’re a bad, bad person :D.
Jayjay, I was rolling my eyes at the bathroom thing, and the door-opener thing. While this is nowhere NEAR being in the same realm as your current adventure, I found quite a few stupid little things when I was temporarily laid up last fall (broken foot). Including the self-closing door to the orthopedist’s office - impossible to manage in a wheelchair, I’d imagine, and not easy for a relatively “spry” (hah!) person on crutches.
Though, on the bathroom, might that be intentional? I mean, to give you practice in getting over minor bumps, that is.
I hear ya on hating crutches. I had a lot of trouble balancing with mine. I always felt like I was about to fall (I’m a klutz in the best of circumstances, hence the NEED for the damn things). I actually tried a knee walker though I found that to be fairly difficult as well - not all that maneuverable. More flexible than a wheelchair (at least, smaller and lighter), but still no good for stairs. Hard on the knee, and I’d bet it wouldn’t work well with your stump or I’d suggest trying one.
Stairs/crutches: the standard advice is to go up and down them on your ass. Well, that’s not too practical when you’re out and about, but might work at home. Unless of course you’re a klutz (see above)… and nearly wind up tobogganing down half a flight of stairs :p. Needless to say, I didn’t repeat that experiment :p.
OK, for questions: in hindsight, with that first hospital, do you think things could have been turned around if they’d handled you properly? (I gather you don’t think they did, hence the transfer).
I don’t think it would have been possible at that point to avoid losing the foot, no matter what they did. If it was bad enough that they had to amputate only a week later, I can’t imagine it GOT that bad in just a week. And they were READY to amputate if the bone scan had showed osteomyelitis, so they weren’t really NEGLIGENT…and I’m pretty sure I lost any cause for a negligence suit when I suggested the “wait a few weeks, lose some weight, try the bone scan then” plan.
That said, we DID kind of cast a jaundiced eye on the original hospital at the time I got really sick again, hence the decision to go to the other one. In retrospect, I can’t really say the original hospital got anything WRONG, per se…it was just an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances and ignorance (on my part, regarding my actual weight) that kept me from having the amputation a week earlier at the original hospital.
I don’t get it. I’m not offended…I’m just not getting the joke. I’m apparently unusually dense this morning.
This was suggested as a possibility, but it’s very hard to get back up off the floor once you’re at the top, especially if you’re alone or the only one awake in the house.
I think he’s saying if it were expensive, it would have cost you an arm and a leg, so apparently, it was only about half that price…
…and yes, EvilTOJ, you are indeed evil.
I’ll be crass and ask the money question. Does insurance cover a prosthesis? Obviously, you need one because of your living arrangements, but if you lived in a ranch-style house, would the insurance company say, “Oh, you’ll be fine. No stairs! No need for a prosthesis!”
Tell us about the stump shaping, please. I’ve never heard of that process. I just assumed that prosthetics are customized for the individual.
Damn I’m sorry you’ve gone through this, OP – glad your recovery seems to be going well and you’ve got a great attitude!!!
Not to mention, when you’re actually in crisis, you can get STOOPID - speaking from my own experience, and that of my mother-in-law. I once said “uh OK” when I got blown off by my doctor’s receptionist (I’d called with a severe asthma attack, shoulda gone to the ER but that would have required critical thinking skills that, unfortunately, I did not possess at that moment… obviously I survived but had a pretty damn rough night). MIL lied to herself, her husband, and all 3 of her adult kids about how debilitated she was getting; my SIL finally went down there, saw how sick she was, and browbeated (grammar?) her into going to the hospital - where she spent most of a week, plus 2 in rehab. Turns out she had multiple myeloma.
My first thoughts were about eh phantom pains as well, but I see you’ve covered that as well.
My father lost both legs and eventually his life due to diabetes, so I’ve seen it firsthand. Best of luck to you, keep yourself healthy, and exercise.
420 lbs? Please tell me this has led you to change your life style. I’m sure everyone would like to have you around for a while.
“only one awake” isn’t a problem, the loud cussing will correct that ;). But yeah, I found that challenging and I had a foot I could have used if absolutely necessary. I am very glad nobody in the family had the presence of mind (and the suicidal inclination) to grab a video of me attempting this :D.
Not to mention - it’s HARD WORK to shove yourself upstairs, backwards, using your arms.
Something that just occurred to me: you might want to have a handyman-type come out and check your stair railings etc - a railing that would do just find under normal use would perhaps not be up to the chore of someone really leaning onto it on a daily basis. I know one of my kids managed to rip out one of our stair rails - just from goofing off (and she was about 8 at the time). Similarly, look into the shower setup - at the least, an inexpensive shower stool, but you will probably want to have grab bars installed as well.
I was curious about what prosthetic you’d want. I’d go for the totally cybernetic rather than the aesthetic as well. It’s not going to fool anybody.
My question is, did you not see the wound on your foot? My family tends to ignore things until they go away but wouldn’t a wound that’s getting worse and not better be a red flag? Even if you couldn’t feel it at first?
Yes, please, do this. There are handles and doors my mother has managed to rip off; so far none has opened her skull, but we’ve threatened with just leaving off the next door she rips off her kitchen’s cupboards if she doesn’t stop leaning on them. They’re not designed to have a 200lbish woman use them to help her stand on tiptoes and reach whatever… and you’re twice that!
Are you on weight-loss treatment along with everything else?
Sister Vigilante, my half-his-size mother can not see her soles without a mirror. She’s had wounds she was “treating” improperly by feel until we saw them and grabbed the nearest doctor (usually my sister in law), who proceeded to yell at her and give her an appropriate treatment. While she gets her toenails trimmed by a foot doctor, Littlebro and me will offer to help her with her stockings so we can check her feet in between doctor visits, as she usually goes half as often as she’s been told she should.
I’m going to ask a selfish question: What do you know now that you wish one of your nurses had told you earlier, or in different terms, or not told you at all? Seems like when we’re patients, there’s always some stuff we end up discovering on our own, and then we’re frustrated that the staff didn’t think to tell us earlier, or they did and we didn’t process the information well.
(Hey, if we’re going to have medical “Ask The ___” threads, which I think are great, I’m going to use them to be a better nurse!)
Jayjay’s partner here. I hope that you do not mind if I answer, from my perspective. He ignored it for some time and then hoped that it would go away. He also hid it from me. He’s been that way before about health issues. Most of his family is like that too. They don’t want to be a bother or burden to others…
One of the few blessings that has come from this is that he realizes that he cannot simply ignore health problems anymore, and that they will not go away. Hopefully this is a life lesson that he will carry with him from now on.
:smack:
What hurts is that I’ve been telling a similar joke since the surgery. When someone I know finds out about the amputation and asks, “What happened?” I’ve been saying, “I went to fill up the car.”
So far as I know, yes. Mine does, anyway. Now, if I wanted something unnecessarily expensive, like a custom-enameled, computer-controlled leg, they’d probably say “Check the catalog again and get real this time!” But as far as bog-standard prostheses they seem to be pretty good about it.
It’s mostly done by compression garments. The ideal shape for a stump is roughly conical, so it slides in and out of the prosthesis socket without getting stuck. Mine, right now, looks like a stromboli, by which I mean it’s kind of swollen and semi-circular. I’ve been wearing the stump shrinker for about a week, and the “ears” at the corners of the semi-circle are pretty much gone now, but the whole thing is still kind of round. I’m actually waiting for the prosthetist to bring me a new type of shrinker…this one isn’t staying up well and the elastic tends to find its way into the crease of my knee, which is REALLY painful.
Thanks! I didn’t even make a conscious decision to put a good face on or anything…it just never occurred to me to have a bad attitude. It happened, I dealt with it, now it’s time to get well and get better at living with it, which means doing my therapy cheerfully, cooperatively and enthusiastically, and not wasting time feeling sorry for myself. I’m not that bad off, actually. Just in this one rehab home, there are seveal people with both legs off, at least one of whom has one off above the knee and the other one off at the hip! I’m having a walk in the park in comparison.
or a HOP in the park ;).
Yes, I am going to hell.
I’ve actually lost about 70 pounds so far just from having my diet and meds regulated by the hospitals, and because of the exercise I’ve been doing in therapy. They weigh me weekly right now and it’s pretty much a steady downward trend. Hopefully, I can continue it when I leave and go home.
I actually didn’t know there was an open wound on my foot until after I actually got sick. I knew I was getting pain twinges from it, but I thought my neuropathy had found a new way to manifest.
The hospitals have been enforcing a diabetic diet, so the carbs of the meals I’m served are carefully watched. That, along with regular insulin and exercise (therapy) are causing me to lose rapidly (70 pounds in roughly 10 weeks).
I have a few “I wish the therapist had told me…” things, but not really any I can think of for nurses…most of the nurses I’ve had have been absolutely wonderful and the few that weren’t were more grumpy in general than stingy with information.