Operation Ellameleg

Armed and ready for battle

In one of the many emails I’ve received since the accident, my good friend Alison, writes “When you do it, you do it well Elconin”. Allot of people take falls and break their legs right? I somehow manage to not only shatter both the tibia and fibia, but compound them creating a 5 inch wound. Adding insult to injury, I also tear open more than one blood vessel, completely shred a large strand of nerves and roll around in the dirt moaning and bleeding out.

So what might normally be a “simple” recovery has turned into a multifaceted full fledged war over the rights of one lower left leg. Lucky for me 21st century medicine has stood up and offered its full support to this campaign.

Easy Access

The PICC line installed in my right arm is more or less an easy access input/output jack to a main vein. So now blood draws and the administering of meds are not only pain free, but can be done on the couch at my house without the assistance of a nurse.

And everyone's all excited about their new Iphone....

Then there’s the wound-vac. Not more than a few years old these machines create negative pressure at the site of a wound, thus speeding drainage and increasing blood flow - two things that dramatically speed recovery. It’s my understanding that wounds heal up to 3x faster with one of these puppies strapped onto them, and better yet the system is a sterile environment, so the risk of further infection is very very low.

The newest addition to this quiver, namely a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, may be the most interesting and effective tool in the arsenal. Here’s the idea - by putting the body in a pressurized environment of pure oxygen surplus gas is pushed into the system. In and of itself, oxygen is extremely useful because it invigorates white blood cells while also being toxic to many bacteria. So that’s one point for our team and one less for there’s. The addition of pressure (2 atmospheres in my case) forces blood, and thus the gas, into areas where blood flow is normally somewhat restricted like the bones of the lower legs. So this therapy not only helps fight infection, but should help get the requisite blood to my tibia and fibia enabling the healing process to begin.

If you wanna take a dive in the O2, you best be wearing the right threads

So 5 days a week I make a trip out to the Wound Care Center in Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital for a 2 hour “dive” as they like to call it. Pressurized oxygen is a bit of a fire hazard (especially for the guy bathing in it) so the center is very particular about what they allow in the chamber. Basically other than the water bottle, piss bottle, pillows and sheets that they provide, nothing else is allowed in there except my body. I’m not even allowed to wear my own clothes. Everyday I arrive in a new set of scrubs whereupon a nurse checks to make sure I’m not wearing underwear.

After taking vitals and removing the brace they slide me into a glass tube, close it up tight and start pumping the chamber full of oxygen. As pressure builds I’ve got to clear my ears in just the same fashion as diving until we settle in at depth. And then, I just hang out and breathe. This would be a fairly relaxing experience except for the fact that oxygen is toxic at high levels - like the ones created in a tube filled with the pressurized gas. Turns out about 1 in 10,000 dives result in a seizure. With those odds, I’d be an idiot to bet on it, but its hard not to wonder if or when I might “get lucky” and find myself convulsing in a sealed off tube, pissing myself and possibly re-breaking my leg (remember I’m not wearing a brace while I’m in there). The one saving grace is that the hospital does have a television and dvd player with sound pumped into the chamber so there’s at least some distraction from the mind games. Even still, these 2 hour dives feel more like a never ending plane flight than a relaxing nap on the beach.

And it all seems to be working. The last blood draw indicates that there is little to no infection left in my system. Granted, the real test will come when the antibiotics are finished. The decisive moments come then when my body has to fair this on its own. Will an infection resurface (meaning that its too deep in the bones to fight or its on the metal)? But yes, for now things look good. We’re winning this battle, but there’s a far bigger war brewing.