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Just to keep anybody up to date, if your interested..


This is soon after I arrived at the hospital.




A closer inspection of the left foot reveals an odd shape...




The right foot appears in a similar, bag of broken bones look..




After an uncomfortable x-ray, I was admitted that night.
The young but very tired looking doctor placed my heels and lower leg in a sort of half plaster, keeping the tops of feet and leg exposed.
Pain had long set in now, and the alcohol was starting to wear off.
Morphine to the rescue.

I was then wheeled off along corridors, watching the light strips on the ceiling...

I ended up in a room of my own, with more morphine and pills to keep me company.
The next morning I woke up, in a groggy blur and saw 6-7 people enter the room, clipboards ready.
The surgeon wants to know why my feet are in plaster, and advises the young doctor that you should never put Calcaneus Fractures in plaster.

A "Bilateral Calcaneus Fracture" - an operation is needed.
However, they cant operate while my feet are like a bag of spuds.
The skin wouldn't pull back together to stitch up, it'll take over a week or so before they know.

After a couple of days in that room with ice packs under my heels,
my bed was wheeled down the corridor to a bay.
The next day, I was conveyer belted down to another bay further along.




To help reduce the swelling and keep blood flow, 'boots' are folded around around the feet.
These inflate for a second then deflate for a while.
The first time they inflated I almost stuck to the ceiling tiles...
An injection of rat poison every night into the lower stomach prevents me from getting DVT.




By now the swelling had started to go down.




The next 3 pics show the bruising stages..








Just over a week later, the Doctor(Surgeon) comes back with a slightly different team.
Clipboard and pen replaced by suits and dictaphones.

The swelling has gone down enough to operate within the next couple of days.
They plan to operate on the left foot on the Wednesday, then the right foot on the Friday.
He advises its too much to operate on both in the same day.

Tuesday comes and the surgeon advises he has to operate on a young boy instead of me.
I guess the family had Bupa ;-)
He advises im to be transferred to ClatterBridge, and he will operate on both feet on Thursday.

I moved to Clatterbridge that day to an empty ward. I took a few seconds video of the bay, as below,
Low quality video, but hey...
(If the video doesn't play, you need to enable animated Gifs in your web browser settings)



These next two pics were taken by AndyT, as you may of seen in the Thermal Journal




Instead of Compression Boots, I now have Ice Pack Boots.
What looks like a beach drinks cooler is filled with ice and water, and pumped around a membrane placed on the feet. For some reason I ended up having to show the nurse how to use it.




Finally the operation day comes.
The nurse comes and spreads 'Nair' hair removal cream on my lower legs.
It smells like Cucumber.. but badly.
I then had to take a shower, sat on a commode, with my feet sticking out in front of me,
and wash with antiseptic shower gel that seems to sting my face.
Next im given a gown and some paper underpants to wear. Lovely.
The nurse covers my feet with an iodine like stain, and im eventually wheeled away again.

Get to outside the operating theatre, needle goes in..
"Please can you count to 10 for me ?"
"One... Two... Th"

I think it was about 6hrs later..

I sort of woke up and was told the operation is over, I mumbled something, and instantly fell asleep again.
I don't remember anything about that night, apart from being in a lot of pain.
Next day they fitted a 'Pain Control Watch', a morphine drip into a vein you can give a squeeze when needed.
It seemed to work for a while, until it 'tissued', meaning it had come out of the vein.
They fitted another one, that also came out within 24hrs.
The student nurse tried to find another vein, tried about 8-10 times!!, stabbing away moaning that I had rubbish veins. I told her to leave it.
In the morning another nurse tried, but she couldn't find a vein. She asked one of the doctors, he also stabbed away and couldn't find a vein. He called the anaesthetist, he finally found a vein.
But that also came out that night.

Unsurprisingly, I was a bit fed up with needles by now, and asked for tablets instead.
Every 6-8 hours, x2 Paracetamol (White), x2 Tremadol(Green/Yellow), x2 Senna and x1 I cant remember the name of, to help you "go".



The recovery begins..
I have a portable TV, Playstation2, and more magazines than WHSmiths to keep me busy.
About a week later Physio starts, simple bending of the feet forward, back, left, right etc.
Its amazing how stiff your achilles tendons become after 2 weeks of not being used.
I want to know why the Physio nurse smiled every time I went "AAAAArrrrgghhh!!!"

My mum arrives and tells me that an ambulance arrived at her house today, to take me to hospital for a check up appointment. Which is odd, as I haven't even left the hospital yet!
This however, reminded me to advise the hospital of my new address. ;-)

Fast forward now a week and im ready to go home.
The Occupational Therapist has acquired a wheelchair & foot stool for me.
An ambulance takes me home, and im carried up.
Home at last.

The bed from the spare room is moved into the living room behind the couch.
Its now I find that I cant get out the living room to the bathroom, because the bottom of the banister is in the way. A wood saw comes in handy....
I now find that I cant get down the hall, the wheelchair is too wide with the metal rims on.
Viv comes to the rescue with a small spanner.
I can now wheel in and out of the kitchen, living room and bathroom.

Daytime TV is full of people selling houses, or the contents of.
Viv brings down my PC from the spare room and im finally back online.
Fortunately, Demon Internet filter my email from spam, I was getting about 400 a day.
(I've had the same internet account for many years)
So I only had about 30 emails instead of 10,000.

A week later the district nurse comes round to change the dressings on my feet.






The next week she comes to remove the stitches.





This wasn't as painful as I had expected.

We fast forward another week or so now and my hospital appointment is due, 22nd October.
Early that Friday morning, I rang up the hospital to check they have the correct address.
They did have the correct address, but they hadn't arranged any transport to pick me up from it.
They apologised, and re-arranged my appointment for Monday.

Monday came, and the ambulance arrived. Hurah !
It was raining a bit, 2 men turned up. One was a `strong` looking bloke (who originally helped me into the flat when I first got home), and the other one looked like Ronnie Corbet.
This meant that they couldn't carry me out. Because of the rain they might slip, and that I needed a 4 man lift. They said they would be back in about 45 mins with another 2 men to help.
An hour later I had a phone call from the Hospital advising that there are no more people available today to help, and that they will re-arrange (again) for my appointment to be next Monday.



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