Late night 9/16/16: I didn’t see the stairs. Medically, that caused a “comminuted open fracture of the left distal femur.” In 6 months, we added “nonunion.”
IOW, I absolutely powdered my thighbone right above Elmo, my replacement knee, so there’s not much left for Elmo to live in, and it’s having trouble growing back.
The goal: Regrow bone so that Elmo has a home. In the meantime, I’m learning about life in a wheelchair, and fretting, because so far that dad-blasted bone is about as fertile as a rock.
The threat: If the bone doesn’t grow, Kaiser wants to remove Elmo and replace him with a new, less successful implant that wears out pretty quickly. When it does, my only recourse is mid-thigh amputation. The Kaiser traumatologist says if I’m lucky, I’ll be so old it won’t matter.
I’m not sure you can get THAT old, so let’s not go there. I’ve found leading tramatologists who say Kaiser is taking the wrong approach; my leg can be saved. This series is about exactly that.
