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#18
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10-19-2018, 06:37 PM
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| My Rank: PRIVATE FIRST CLASS Poster Rank:3527 Join Date: May 2018 Posts: 99 Mentioned: 1 Post(s) Quoted: 29 Post(s)
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Re: Didn't Have a Leg to Stand on
I've still got it, two years after the amputation. At times it's extremely painful, though that's just a couple of hours a day. I'm taking 600-900mg of gabapentin a day. Even weirder than the pain is the fact that I can still FEEL the lower leg and foot that aren't there any more. I can wiggle the toes, flex my ankle, the toe I had gout in is still painful at times--if I didn't see the proof, I'd be sure that leg was still there. This is pretty weird, though you get used to it. Backstory: pain in my knees & ankles, misdiagnosed for a couple of years. Half-dozen ER visits later, someone found honkin' big aneurysms in the popliteal arteries of both legs. Serious bloodflow blockages. They put stents in both legs (one at a time); my left leg healed without problem. The right one never worked right. Docs worked like crazy to fix it, each fix failed, lots and lots of pain, I was out of work for 8.5 months in two years, and finally the doc came to my hospital bed and said, "I'm sorry but we've lost the fight--we are going to have to amputate." I was pretty much expecting it so I was ready: I looked sad, said, "Well, OK ... it WILL grow back, right?" I was in a wheelchair for 4 months after the amputation, and that wasn't as bad as it sounds. I put a big plaque on the back of the chair reading "Blue Lena II" (Blue Lena was Keith Richards' 1966 Bentley and I'm a fan.) And pretty young women were always giving me that big sweet "Oh, aren't you brave!" smile. I even got winked at twice! At my age that's lots of fun. I don't have a fully healed photo handy but I'm uploading a "still healing" photo--for a long time the end of my stump looked like a big ol' butt, with that big cleft down the middle. |
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#19
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10-19-2018, 06:49 PM
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| My Rank: PRIVATE FIRST CLASS Poster Rank:3527 Join Date: May 2018 Posts: 99 Mentioned: 1 Post(s) Quoted: 29 Post(s)
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Re: Didn't Have a Leg to Stand on
Actually, a few of my friends call me "Stumpy" now. :-) That's kind of cool because I'm a big fan of Spinal Tap, and they had two different drummers named Stumpy.
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