Hey guys, going to make this short and sweet.
You can read up on my situation if you care as I made another post a few weeks ago about my screw falling out.
So I went to the ER, had an x-ray, had blood tests. Everything looked normal, inflammatory markers on the blood test were normal. Despite this I was referred to an orthopedic surgeon and told to make an appointment with him after having a CT.
So last week I had the CT and had my appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon following. Bear in mind at this point I would say I am pushing closer and closer to being fully recovered, obviously walking is normal, jogging causes knee pain in patella tendon but is normal when taking pain killers. I don't really have the explosive power due to my fked tendons so skateboarding/sprinting/squatting(40kg+) is not possible at this time. I can run up stairs 2 by 2 pretty close to what I used to be able too, which is also a good exercise I would recommend other LLers recovering as it hardly puts any stress on the screws.
So I went in and the doctor told me that he wasn't sure but he had to check with his boss. He took a picture of my tibia and sent it too his boss right there and left the room. When he came back he was very grave and told me I had osteomyelitis (spelling? bone infection), chronic for months given the changes the bacteria has caused in the bone. So he told me I would need to be admitted to the ward and surgical options would follow after he, his boss and also other peers had discussed my case.
So they do more blood tests which are negative again for inflammatory markers yet apparently this doesn't at all rule out an infection. Other doctors visit me such as the head of infectious disease and 3 orthopedic surgeons who seem to always move in a team together headed by the guy previously called boss.
After a few days of deliberation and spelling out a number of options too me which all involve removing the nail in my leg they finally come to the conclusion on the current surgery that I will have in 12 hours or so. They will remove the nail in my leg, they will scrape some of the bone from inside and culture it too see what bacteria has taken up habitation (I have previously had pathology results test positive for staph aureus although only on the wound site(Golden staph)). At this point the boss man will make a choice. If my tibia is oozing puss and heavily infected then he will replace the nail with an antibiotic coated cement nail. If there is no visible signs of infection then I will simply be left with no hardware in my leg. I am told even the antibiotic cement nail is hardly weight bearing and wouldn't be put in for such an effect only for its antiobiotic properties. After discussing my CT with other doctors they came to the conclusion that my bone growth is adequate to leave me with no hardware inside and just have a cast on my leg for two weeks and then slowly reintroduce weight bearing.
This scares the living out of me, because whilst the back 180 degrees of my bone seem to be the same density as the rest of the tibia, there is literally no bone on the front. I mean the x-ray is literally empty for the front portion of the bone :s. It really hasn't been long at all since I had the nail locked and I was actually told by an ortho that they would prefer to just leave the nail in permanently, yet now they are removing at after such a short time. I will also have to wear a cast on my leg for two weeks and walk with crutches for an extended period of time.
I think I covered everything. Seems like the user base of this forum has moved on so not really sure if anyone cares. Just vowed to update on the forum after so many of the Sarin patients got maimed and stayed silent.
I actually spoke to Sringari the other day and he seemed generally worried. There is no way of knowing when the initial infection occured. But, I will say that I think it was from the second surgery. My reasoning is that after the second surgery the wound was wrapped and when it was taken off it was swabbed with benedine. There was no time in between the second surgery and when I got the bandages off for it to become infected. Signs of infection were obvious as soon as I took off the bandages from the second surgery, which were acknowledged by Sringari as he placed me on antiobiotics and also took me to hospital to inspect it prior to me leaving.
Cheers guys. Probably awful grammar/spelling.
Author
Topic: Update: Tibia Lengthening in India, Screw fell out (Read 8194 times)