ERTL Amputation Two Years Later

Monday, February 15 2010 - ,

Carol pointed out to me that I was remise in writing the two year update. You can find the One Year Update here.

The very short update is everything has been going fine. Carol goes to the gym and works out 4-6 days per week. She runs 3 – 5 miles, weights, etc. Aside from the revision for bone spurs and nerve issues she’s had very few problems with the amputation.

She has continued to have fit problems with her prosthetic. These are caused mostly by the fact that she seems to continue to lose volume in her stump. I’ve lost count of the number of actual legs she has had. Fortunately she has a great prosthetist who has really helped.

Lately she’s been in a different type of leg. Rather than the vacuum seal that she had been wearing she’s now in one held on by a full length leg sleeve. For a long time she avoided this type of leg because she didn’t care how it looked. Now that she is in it, though, it’s by far the most comfortable leg she’s ever had.

Recently she did have an incident of skin breakdown that went unnoticed for a few days. It was at the very bottom of her stump and began leaking fluids. She had a scheduled doctor’s appointment the day after we found it and after two nights of tegaderm the wound is completely healed.

She is still experiencing significant nerve issues in the stump and lately we’ve started to strongly suspect that the medication she’s taking for the phantom pain is causing other more serious side effects. Unfortunately the nerve issues, for her, aren’t really related to the amputation, but to an underlying issue at birth.

All things considered, she’s in far less pain, more mobile, and generally happier than she was with the broken ankle.