Life is not always happiness and smiles.. even though social media might make it look like that sometimes.
Following a limb centre appt 5 weeks ago due to unexpected left leg pain, the possibility of further vascular issues was raised.
I’ve not been allowed to walk for 5 weeks.
I asked ACC to make me an URGENT vascular appt.. I am yet to hear back. 🙄😒
I was not prepared to wait (for any length of time to be honest) so instead I went to my GP. He contacted my surgeon and made that appointment happen – a week later. Today I went to get a vascular ultrasound. The completely crazy thing is that despite having private medical insurance, there are NO vascular ultrasound private appointment options available. Like WTAF?
My PTSD has been going wild inside my head. I have had constant flashbacks for the last ten days. I’ve been unable to sleep and I feel like my happy cheerful edge has been taken away temporarily. The two flash backs I have had are the very first visit (when they could not find an pulse in many foot at all) and the last (when I was tied the graft had gone down and there were no more surgical options left).
SO I was like hell that everything is still ok with the arteries that I have left in that leg.
All sorts of things have been swimming around in my head.
- The possibility of losing more leg
- The fact that they didn’t even know the cause last time around
- I am not one to cry wolf. I have been right every time so far. I am seriously hoping to be wrong this time.
- Could it really really be the fact that I have built more muscle in the calf, almost 4 years after the original amputation?
Peter took a day off and drove me up to Dunedin. I was not in the right mental head space to travel alone.
He constantly reassured me that he would be there for me, regardless of what the scan shows me. That meant the world to me, considering what happened last time around.
Vascular lab
The last time I visited here was the day that they found the graft had failed. I knew immediately that meant that me and the left foot would be parting ways. So I was not looking forward to this too much.
I was, however, very pleased to see that once I was taken to the treatment rooms, the whole department had had been renovated. There were new walls, doors and treatment rooms where there weren’t before. This immediately made me feel better. I knew that this visit would not cause any further flash backs.
Geri came around to the waiting room and called my name. I Recognised her immediately as the lady that runs the dept, who was here 4 years ago when I first came. She didn’t immediately recognise me, saying I looked completely different to how she remembered, it was my accent that had jogged her memory.
Last time around I was the version of myself who didn’t wear makeup, didn’t wear any colour just jeans and T shirts, and always had my hair scraped back into a pony tail, dyed brown. I also didn’t wear a REAL smile too much either it seems looking back.
I was very happy for her to be scanning me. I knew she wouldn’t mince words and would tell me what she is seeing real time. No waiting for results, bla bla bla.
The vascular ultrasound measures in and out flow through arteries and veins. There is a very specific sound you hear on the machine for arterial flow. One I remember well, dating back to all the left foot dramas.
I was very pleased to hear that sound from the common femoral and external iliac arteries, the two arteries that feed the remaining branches I have left in my thigh (femoral profunda and circumflex femoral). That, quite simply, was all we needed to hear.
What does this mean?
This means that Ryoji was right. The vacuum pump system was too much for my compromised vascular system in the left leg. It was in fact causing me damage as he feared and my stump had improved considerably since I stopped wearing that leg and stopped walking.
After watching the world para-athletics very closely recently, he said that he knows that a one way valve system will be sufficient for my activity level. Some of the track athletes he was watching on TV use it, that is how he knows.
I popped into the limb centre while I was there and he fixed the valve on my temporary leg. He also said the 3D printer is fixed and they are now beginning to work through the backlog. He hopes to have my socket back in the next week or so. (FINGERS CROSSED).
REALITY CHECK
It seems that the strength work I have started doing when I decided to strip my training back and go back to basics, is actually paying off. I actually did increase the volume of my remaining left calf, which caused the tightness in the socket. This is likely to have contributed to the chain of events that led to symptoms in my leg that set off alarm bells.
So I will continue as I had been for a while. Then reassess and see if it’s feasible to come back and give it a crack again in 2026 once I have done the ground work.
Thank you Peter for your unconditional love and support.
