Recovering from Broken Bones

You may have noticed the sparse number of posts that appeared on this blog in August September and October of 2017. The reason was, I was in the hospital in August and even though I was home by September I was not able to type much until November.

At age 74, I had avoided illness and injury and had never been hospitalized, but on July 14, 2017 I slipped on a marble floor full of soapy water in my subdivision pool men’s room and landed hard on my left side. I was not careful enough.

Some of the guys at the pool saw me on the floor and came in. I asked them to pick me up and sit me in a chair. They wanted to know if they should call an ambulance, but I said I just wanted to sit for a while and wanted to see if I could stand up. After about 30 minutes of visiting, I tried to stand up, but couldn’t, so I said I was ready for the ambulance. It arrived and the EMTs lifted me on to a gurney and delivered me to Northside Hospital. I arrived and got placed in a room. I was wheeled down to the MRI. When I got back I learned that I had a fractured femur, a broken shoulder and a shattered elbow. There was an orthopedic surgeon on-call at the hospital who gave me the bad news, but he was in more shock than I was at the amount of damage that was done.

My son is a sales manager for a medical equipment company and knows how to find out who the best doctors are. My wife called and gave him the name of the doctor. He called back and said “He is one of the best”.  With that done, we were ready to go.

Our surgeon asked if I wanted all of this fixed at the same time and I said yes, if he could do it.  The next morning he performed the 8 hour surgery. My particular injuries were not easy to repair and the surgical team had to get creative. I woke up the next day and I was able to stand. I now had a titanium rod in my leg and stainless steel plates, rods, pins and nails to hold my shoulder and elbow in place. The PTs and medical staff worked with me for a couple of days and I was ready to go to a Rehab facility.  They did a great job at Northside. I got a copy of my x-rays and was amazed by the hardware I was carrying

Given the extent of my injuries, I figured that I would be recuperating for about 6 months and would be able to function normally by Christmas.

The family did the research and selected Salude Rehab Center in Suwanee GA.  It was perfect. I was put on a gurney and ambulanced from Northside to Salude and put in a bed in a large private room. I met the Salude director and staff, showed them my x-rays and settled in.

Salude is a 70 bed boutique Rehab Center set up to do in-patient rehab in 20 days. That was perfect in my case.  Salude had a chef and a nutritionist and the meals were prescribed and exceptional. I had blood taken daily and medication nightly. The staff was great and knew their stuff.

My left arm was in a cast and my doctor said to leave it alone and let it heal. Salude’s job was to get me walking and not let my arm muscles atrophy. My goal was a quick, total recovery.

My favorite saying was “It hurts so good”.  Being a Republican and a Catholic all my life, I had a high tolerance for pain and didn’t mind the soreness.  I had a great attitude and understood why I needed to keep everything moving and restore function and the staff appreciated that.

They enjoyed my good attitude, my respect for their help and my sense of humor.  I was there to have fun and get well and do everything I could to become self-sufficient.

I had a button to press when I needed someone to empty my urine bottle or fill my ice water pitcher or needed help to get to the bathroom. I focused on doing things myself, but I was careful.

I had to be careful not to fall again and disconnect my new parts. Before my fall I had 2001 parts and after the surgery I had 2015 parts and could no longer go through a metal detector.

I couldn’t lift my left leg, so they taught me to lift my useless left leg with my good right leg to swing it around so I could get out of bed and in to a wheel chair. My PT sessions were one hour long and twice a day.

I would get up and into my wheel chair and wheeled down to the Rehab Center. I would be wheeled up to the pedal machines and exercise my legs and then wheelchair up to a bar to used rubber exercise bands to strengthen my leg and arm muscles.

I was ready for a “hemi-walker” after about 10 days and stopped using the wheelchair.  I did a lot of walking and learned how to walk up and down stairs. By day 20 I had completed my checklists, seen my surgeon and was ready to go home.

We had our contractor friend send his carpenters to install a second handrail to our staircases, so I could go up to shower and go to bed and down to get to my office.

We chose Guardian for home PT for the leg and OT for the arm.  The PT and OT each came twice every week. I did leg exercises and a lot of walking. I graduated to a cane after a couple of weeks and finished my PT checklist and stopped using the cane.  I also did arm exercises and got a pulley system to continue to restore range of motion in my arm. I finished my OT checklist and finished up with Guardian in about 30 days. Guardian was great.

By November I could walk and use my left arm for normal activities. My range of motion was about 90% for my left arm. I still needed to get my elbow to bend more and needed to reach higher, but could now end my “weight-bearing” restrictions and work on restoring my left arm to full use.

Rather than go to a store-front PT facility to continue therapy I chose a Chiropractor/ Kinesiologist to work on my alignment using targeted methods. My surgeon agreed. I went for evaluation and treatment in January and again in February and will see her in March.  She is superb.

My general knowledge of and interest in medicine gave me some advantages. My grandpa was and MD and my uncle was an MD. I was the Personnel Director at Washington U Medical School. Later I managed Medical Plans for companies and had Nurses working for me. I understand what Providers do.

I was impressed with how far we’ve come in medicine.   I expect to recover fully and will be cutting the grass in my own yard this Spring. 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader