The day that changed my life

I've taken a day or so to work out in my own mind, the best way to write about 27th Feb 2007. I woke up, went to Martlesham ward and was first on the list. I was pleased at being first as I thought I'd be up and out by teatime and wanted out as soon as possible. I don't remember too many details really. I get flashbacks of moments, like strange thoughts and pictures in a bit of a muddle. I remember seeing a nurse just as I went into the operating theatre that I knew and she was smiling and telling me that she would be working next door. She was meant to be in my operation but as I was a nurse, they placed her next door for confidentiality reasons. My next memory is looking at the clock in recovery. It was 11:11am. I don't remember the pain but I do know I was in agony. I'd had surgery before on my wrist and knew that the quicker I could get my fingers moving, the quicker I was allowed home. I figured that I could try the same thing here so tried to move my foot but I couldn't. I remember that the recovery nurses were concerned, holding my hand, stroking my head and scurrying around asking where my surgeon was. I saw a few different Drs before my surgeon showed his mug and that was a while later. I told him something was wrong, that my leg was absolutely excruciating and I couldn't move my foot. He said it was normal as I'd had to have a tourniquet on for a while. A nurse suggested that he should get a Doppler to check for a pulse. He said he had his next patient to see and to call the vascular team. I recall the atmosphere being one of panic. The way the nurses spoke reassuringly to me and held my hand whilst trying to get my pain under control was amazing. I ended up getting a PCA which is an I.V. fitted pump for morphine that the patient controls themselves.
My next memory is of a surgeon pushing my bed from recovery to the angiogram suite. I remember him telling me that there was a serious problem an that I would in all likelihood lose my leg. I find it strange looking back as when he said it, I felt nothing. It was as if he had offered me a cup of tea. Maybe it was shock, drugs or a mixture of both. I was told that the angiogram showed that my main artery, vein and nerve had been severed. The popliteal artery was completely dissected. Everything seemed to be happening in a daze. It was like a dream. Something I'd wake from and feel that sense of relief. I was rushed into theatre and was told they would try and do a vein graft; a bypass to allow blood to get down to my lower leg. By this time it was around 6-7 hours from the first surgery and I don't remember anything much from that time other than ghost moments. Doctors and nurses looking at my leg, me trying to move it. My parents telling me I'd be fine but seeing the fear and disbelief in their eyes. I'd developed compartment syndrome so had a faschiotomy in my lower leg. Fasciotomy or fasciectomy is a surgical procedure where the fascia is cut to relieve tension or pressure commonly to treat the resulting loss of circulation to an area of tissue or muscle. Fasciotomy is a limb-saving procedure when used to treat acute compartment syndrome.(courtesy of Google)
I remember a surgeon coming to see me around midnight. My brother was with me. The surgeon said that the graft had failed and that I would be reviewed in the morning as there was still no pulse. The nursing staff were unhappy about this but I was too out of it to comprehend it all. I couldn't sit up, I'd tried to have a look at my leg because everyone was talking about how bad it looked. Charming hey? 😂😂 I found a picture for you to show you though so you don't feel left out.

On 28th, the day after my simple operation to reduce swelling in my knee, I went back to surgery. It was around lunch time, I felt awful, really physically ill and the surgeon came to see me to say that the graft had indeed failed and that they were now looking at the next best course of  action. My mum and brother had just gone to grab a coffee in the canteen. I remember asking the one question that had been going round and round in my head but I had been too scared to ask. Am I going to die? You see things like this on the television, in films and books. These things don't happen to you and me. The surgeon simply smiled sadly and said "we will do everything we can". He then asked if I wanted to wait to say goodbye to mum and brother. I am embarrassed to say that I was so scared of dying, that in that moment, all I wanted was to be put to sleep, have my anaesthetic and be out of it. I couldn't wait. If I was going to die I wanted to sleep now, not in 20 mins when my family got back. So I went, crying, to theatre saying over and over again, please don't let me die.

I woke up in the high dependency unit. I asked, "is it gone?" My partner hugged me and said yes. My next sentence was, "well that's the first time I've been legless without having a beer". Thus began my months of joking and laughing, giving strength to all around me while inside, I was broken. Completely and utterly broken.
That will do for today, I need go kill monsters on my Xbox 😔 I apologise for bits I may have missed, I'll check over this tomorrow. It's difficult to put into words the truth of the situation and I still feel bitter, angry, sad and wishing that I could write out the report I have on their investigation. I'll write a few bits out of it in my next blog. Stay healthy peeps ✌🏻️

Well cut my legs off and call me shorty 🙄

Around 1992 I developed a swollen right knee. There was no pain or redness and didn't occur after any injury. I ignored it for quite a while. When it started to cause pain I was referred to Ipswich hospital for investigations. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I wasn't too worried, I hated labels and just decided to get on with my life and doing what I loved. When my knee started to cause me too much pain, my rheumatologist gave me steroid injections into it, removed any fluid in the joint and it settled down for a while. This carried on until I ended up having to have steroid injections every 3 months. An X-ray of my knee showed it to be in good shape and there was a worry that continuing with the quarterly steroids would cause damage to my knee. I was referred to orthopaedics for surgical assessment and had my appointment set for 6th October 2006.

When I first met the surgeon, I'm embarrassed to say that when I saw he was an English doctor, I was relieved. I thought that it would be a bonus to be able to understand him and knew that he would have decent qualifications having been trained in a western society. How fucking ignorant was I? I hate that I had thought that and it has stuck with me since that day. It has made me question my belief system, my nurturing and social media impact because I have never considered myself racist. Why I feel the need to even write it here, laid bare for all to see, I honestly don't know. When I decided to write this blog I decided that there was no point in writing it if I wasn't honest about everything. For me, omitting things that are unpleasant to know about yourself is just as bad as lying about it. Maybe what happened was karma....if so, fuck me that's harsh! 😕

The surgeon advised that I should have an arthroscopy and partial synovectomy. For those with no medical background, the surgeon would remove inflamed tissue from inside the knee joint while using a camera. It is keyhole surgery. The surgeon assured me that although this procedure wasn't a cure, it would provide me with a few years of respite from the pain and swelling and eliminate the need for steroid injections. After discussing the surgeons advice with my ward manager and family, it was agreed and I was booked in for day surgery. 

I had a Chicken Korma the evening before my operation. Chicken Korma and a vodka and coke. I remember I ate it with a spoon because I couldn't be bothered to wash up a knife and fork. It's funny the useless things you remember when you look back over your life. How mundane and unextraordinary our final days could be. I didn't die but I came close and one of my last moments on earth could have been eating Indian takeaway with a spoon 😂😂

My final thought of the day......

The beginning of the end

Today feels a little strange. Granted, I'm still on a whacking amount of drugs but also, in an attempt to give you guys the best version of events that I can, I've re-read the clinical investigation report and witness statements that were carried out by Ipswich hospital after they so spectacularly butchered my leg. Consequently, I've decided that in order to not come across as bitter and twisted or go the polar opposite and make light of it all, I'm going to post a video link to an above knee amputation. 😜 It's pretty gory and not for the faint hearted. If you really want to feel a part of my life blog it would be cool of you to see what happened to me. Let me know if you were able to watch it. I'll take a night off blogging to collect my thoughts and fill you in on the next chapter tomorrow. ✌🏻️
https://youtu.be/dAOa6ZGOvYU

Pre op part 2

...Sport! I used to be really into sport. I was branded a tomboy from an early age; labels tut 🙄. For as long as I can remember, it was my therapy. It was my legal high and my escape from childhood traumas. I guess we all have our safety nets, our 'go to release' when things get shitty. Counselling, alcohol, food, drugs,supportive friends and family. Me? I had sport.
I was the only girl in junior school who was allowed to play football during P.E. Back in those golden  olden days, girls and boys were split up for P.E. While the rest of the girls played netball, I was hacking the fudge out of the lads. Who'd have guessed that all those P.E. lessons would have had me scoring with the male of the species. Quite the contrast against my score sheet as an adult 🙊
As soon as I was old enough to go out on my own, I spent all of my free time over the park playing football, tennis, running and playing basketball. I was also pretty nifty on a pair of roller skates, often recreating scenes from Xanadu on a Sunday afternoon at our local sports centre.
By the time I began my high school education, I was representing Suffolk in badminton and cross country running and played netball for Christchurch ladies. When I was 12 years old I recieved my Five Star and pentathlon in athletics along with a letter of achievement from Joslyn Hoyte-Smith. I can honestly say that sport was my life and I continued to participate in anything remotely sporty throughout my academic life, including 6th form, even managing to squeeze in 3 years of nurse training. While I studied to become a psychiatric nurse, I was playing football for Ipswich Town ladies and learning how to kick arse as I karate chopped my way through the belts in English Korean Karate. I became the east of England and national champion. I was like Hong Kong fucking Fuey, floating like a brick and stinging like a, like a, erm....😬 Yeah, sorry, I digress.🙈
I was in training to take on the British kickboxing champion in an event that was to be televised on Sky sports, when I discovered that following a nasty bout of 'got really pissed and fell over', I had fractured my scaphoid bone. Five operations!! Alcohol is demon spawn.
I've bored you all senseless with my love of sports, haven't even gone into surfing and water skiing, for the sole purpose of trying to give you an insight into what I was all about. To me, I was sport and I was nurse. Both took dedication on my part, hard work, sweat and plenty of tears. No one expected me to make it as a nurse. I'd messed about at school, finding it far more entertaining to be class clown  than learning about X and Y = C-7 3/4....sport was my escape, my coping mechanism from childhood  traumas and nursing was my focus. I wanted to make a difference. I knew how my demons had made me feel and I wanted to help exorcise those demons for others, help them to live and not merely exist.
I came to know far worse demons than I'd been used to when I was referred to Ipswich hospital for a swollen knee. That, my lovely people, is a story for another day. ✌🏻️

Good times pre 2007 Part 1....

An hour and a half....that's how long I've sat here trying to think of a way to start today's blog 😳 I'm aware that it isn't something that needs to be done everyday, yet since I'm not sleeping and I'm stoned on my meds, I've come over all creative and 'authory '. I'm even contemplating wearing an unbuttoned white Oxford shirt with matching waistcoat and blazer and leaning against a huge marble fireplace, a glass of red wine in one hand and a quill in the other. To be fair, the fireplace is necessary as without it, I'd fall over. 

O.K. So here comes a difficult stage in the creation of my blog. Isn't it ironic, (don't ya think)? that by the very nature of 'blogging', I find myself stumbling. Stumbling metaphorically, not physically although that too happens more frequently than I'd like. 😕 I find myself desperately reaching around inside my head for the words needed to adequately convey the very real physical and mental pain attached to my memories of the 27th/28th February 2007. 

The Cambridge Dictionary's definition of 'a blog'  is "a regular record of your thoughts, opinions or experiences that you put on the Internet for other people to read." That's pretty much Facebook then 🤔 People that know me will vouch for me in so far as I can talk. I talk quite a lot. My difficulty lies in my lack of spiritual and emotional vocabulary. To be perfectly honest with you, I am absolutely shit at pinpointing my emotions and putting them into words. Tammy is amazing at reading me. She still, at times, finds me extremely frustrating....hard to believe, I know 😇 

So, I had literally just written a load of 'stuff' about my time pre amputation and I had to delete it because I ran out of space 😳 Told you I could talk a load of shit didn't I? Till next time......x 

Morning campers....it's day 5 in the house of phantom pain and sleep is for wimps 😕 As I said yesterday, (in my blog that you ALL read 👀) despite MST twice a day, Oramorph every 4 hours, Diazepam 3 times a day, Piriton (morphine makes me itch like mad) and Zopiclone at night, I have seriously had about 6 hours sleep in 5 days. Not all amputees suffer with phantom pain but many do. We also have something called phantom sensation. There is a difference between the two. Amputees usually describe phantom pain as painful cramps, electric shocks, burning or stabbing. When I get phantom pain, 99% of the time it feels like a bunch of knives being thrust into the bottom of my non-foot. This causes my little leg to jolt into the air and I scream like a girl in a horror film. As I'm sure you can imagine, Tammy has been close to heart failure many times 😂😂😂.
Phantom sensation is equally annoying. It's the itch that you can't scratch because you have no arm/foot/leg to scratch. It can be like a constant cold, dead hand/foot. For me, the only thing I can compare that cold, dead feeling to, is to have you imagine you've sat on your foot for too long and it gets pins and needles and feels numb. Well that's my non leg all the time. I can also feel my non leg, even wiggle my toes. It's one hell of a head fudger 🙃.
You may have noted I used the words 'little leg' when referring to my residual limb. (The bit of leg I still have). I don't know if you two legged people know this but most amputees absolutely detest the word STUMP😒. I got a great response to the questionnaire I sent out yesterday and nearly 90% of the people that have replied so far, hate that word too. People in general don't seem to get it. We go to surgery with legs and come out with a stump....a dead lump of wood. Not a nice analogy for many of us to endure at such a delicate and traumatic time. I remember my mum writing a poster, in huge letters, "Karen does not have a stump. She has a little leg" and then sticking it on the board over my bed.
It would come as no surprise to any reasonably intelligent person that the shock felt, especially in the early days after surgery, is head-blowingly (my blog, I can make up words if I like 😜) numbing. The tiniest things that the people around us don't notice are huge to us that have just lost a limb. I hated it when people sat on my bed where my leg once was. Porters dumping my notes on my bed where my leg was as they wheel me to treatment and X-Ray. There should be a finishing school for staff that work with amputees 😜😂, a book on etiquette for nurses and doctors. Lady Calver-Florys etiquette for amputee interactions....hmmmm, I might be onto something here! There would no doubt need to be a large chapter on phrases to avoid while speaking with a newly chopped amputee. My friend Chris will be able to help with that. She came to visit very soon after my operation and I rolled over her toes in my wheelchair. Without missing a beat she said, "Don't worry, I've got another" hahaha bloody show off. There are a few others....'put my foot in it', 'don't have a leg to stand on', 'hopping mad'....I think you get where I'm coming from. Rest assured though, my dear double footed friends....most of us find it funny. It's far easier to deal with these challenging life events with humour after all 😊✌🏻️

Questionnaire 🤔

Afternoon all 🙂
Today, stoned on Oramorph, MST and Diazepam, I have been jotting ideas down all over the place. Whether I can read what I wrote when I've weened off the pain killers is yet to be seen. I've suffered really annoying and somewhat excruciating phantom pain since I lost my leg in 2007 and like most amputees, nothing really helps it. No amount of prescribed medications have ever come close to easing the pain but morphine takes the edge off it. Today's 'non foot' feels dead, like I've been sitting on it for hours. Then there are those beautiful 'Freddy Kruegar' stabs into the bottom of my foot that make me shriek out, Tammy jumps out of her chair, the dogs bark and so the cycle continues. Today I've formulated a questionnaire to get some other amputees input in a bid to give you readers as broad an idea as possible on what an amputees life is like. No, we don't just hop onto our prosthetic and go skipping down the beach in our flip flops. Speaking of which, I only own a flop....my flip sits redundant under a kids dirty bucket and spade.
For the people amongst you that can take some gory facts and images, I have located links for you. The watch list so far sits at:- Above knee amputation surgery
                                              Below knee amputation surgery
                                              Arm amputation
                                              Osseointergation
My, what a lucky bunch you are 😂😂😂😂
If anyone has ideas on any other links they think may be helpful, feel free to drop me message ✌🏻️
Karen

In the beginning was the word....and the word was trust.

If this were a book, I guess it would be classed as a historical novel. I also have to be upfront  and say that the reasons for embarking on this literary trek through my life, is two fold. Firstly, honestly, I'm hoping it may reach someone that finds it a tiny bit helpful, insightful, maybe a little humorous and secondly, more importantly, I really hope that I find some peace, some way forward through the quicksand of panic and dread that I find myself in almost daily. 

Many people, from all walks of life, will, at some time or another, face difficult, heart breaking situations. The impact on any said person will more often than not, be filtered through societies sieve. The support we have from family and friends, our economic infrastructure; employment, housing, coping mechanisms, our responsibility to those we love and so on. For me, it always comes down to communication. Our ability, or lack of, to speak to loved ones, professionals and in my case, the odd stranger or three. There really is something quite therapeutic about talking to a complete stranger about things you wouldn't tell your closest friends. Maybe because you aren't having to be mindful of their feelings on you! I was shocked by many things when my life changing event hit me like a derailed train. One thing that sticks with me now and has happened from the very first day and it is still rearing its annoyingly,  fat head now, usually at the most inappropriate times, is the way people have a need to rush you into a place or position much further on in your recovery than is right for you. It's like the pain they feel at seeing you in the mess that is your life, is just too much for them to handle emotionally. So they push and push, chivvying you along with no regard for your need to heal. I don't blame them, I see it for what it is...the sooner they see you "well", the sooner their pain dissipates. They aren't being intentionally selfish...I guess its human nature to ignore the elephant in the room. It does, however, tend to lead itself into pushing us into hiding our true feelings and thoughts, fears and insecurities when what we really need is for someone to stop, take a minute to actually listen to our version of events and not just hear our placating murmurs of "yes, I'm doing great thanks". 

So, my plan for this blog is to share my experiences, some facts on limb loss and some of the issues facing amputees. If anyone has any questions or ideas of what they would like to see, please feel free to comment. As much as this blog is for me and my mental/spiritual growth, I would also like it to offer some insights and advice that other amputees, their friends and family, will be able to access at times of low mood or just a friendly ear when you need someone who knows the struggles you face when life is a constant battle.