My vision began blurring around mid December of 2005, so I was sent to Dr. “Eyes”, who told me he couldn't determine if it was from the blunt trauma or diabetes. I argued I wasn't a diabetic, but he said I had all the classic eye symptoms. I went into immediate denial, thinking they were using it as an excuse not to repair my eyes. Up until the beating, I had perfect vision.
This is where the nightmare really started developing. Little did I know that shortly afterward, the incision opened up inside of the cast and became infected, destroying all hopes of the bone healing. That wasn't discovered until three weeks later. Not knowing this, I ignored repeated advice from my mother and friends about applying for Social Security disability or Welfare because I didn't think I needed it and thought that applying for state help was and still is the ultimate in admitting failure.
December 29th the cast came off and the infection was discovered. January 11th, 2005, I went into surgery at Grant Hospital and it was confirmed I was a diabetic. A predicted hour and a half
of outpatient surgery turned into 10 hours. The bone was unsavable and the infection was more extensive than they thought. They had to match and implant a cadaver bone graft in its place. I woke up with three metal pins sticking out through the skin of the right side of my left foot. A bar connected them to hold the implant in place. Inside, I now had a metal plate in my foot from my ankle to my toe with screws into my bones to hold it together.
I was warned that the infection was so bad that, unless I started on intravenous daily antibiotics, I'd die in the time it took my blood to circulate. This necessitated a visiting nurse coming once a week to pull a foot-long plastic "PICC" line out of a vein in my bicep leading to my heart, and injecting another in after she changed the dressing. This had a nipple, through which I had to inject myself with drugs and antibiotics three times daily.
Things became necessary, like rearranging the apartment so I could get between the couch and the shelving unit with my walker, and a neighbor tearing down a wall of aquariums just so I could get into the living room. My foot had to stay elevated at all times, so I was told I'd be stuck flat on my back for a few months, and with broken ribs I couldn't use crutches. Then came the Percocet, and Vicodin, you know all the fun stuff you've always been told about, only trouble is, they're only fun if you don't need them, but I did.
I was issued a different kind of walker, that made life easier, and a little more fun too. It was a wheeled contraption that I'd kneel on a padded horizontal support with my sore leg and propel myself forward with my good leg. It was like flying around with on a kid's scooter-Fortunately the thing has a hand brake. This also allowed me to stand in front of the sink or stove without having to try to balance on one foot.
Just to make the rent, utilities, basic groceries, and prescriptions that weren't covered (around $1,800), I had to start draining my savings. Since I worked at a job where I earned only partially reported tips, I only got $880 a month to live on. As January went on, there were more surgeries, because the infection affected my bone strength and a 4th pin had to be added to hold everything still and they kept coming loose, which meant more surgeries.
Sleeping with pins and a crossbar sticking out of your foot isn't easy, especially with two cracked ribs. Nightmares and flashbacks started, and I was only getting maybe three hours sleep at a time. Soon I was on antidepressants, and was watching my finances seriously start to dwindle. Especially when the 6-month car insurance came due in March and I also had to buy expensive blood sugar test strips and Glucotrol to control it. I was told to call a few local diabetes associations for help with the expenses, but was told they weren't taking new clients because of City budget cutbacks. I kept up paying $1600 a month on two credit cards, thinking I'd come out of it.
Every third week, I'd see Dr. “Foot”, and he'd say I'd have to wait another three weeks (I'd be back on my feet by January, by early March, by mid April). My eyesight got worse, and with the depression, I couldn't even stand to pick up a pencil to do a sketch or a brush to paint something. As the depression progressed, 40mg of Cymbalta wasn't enough and they increased it to 60mg and had to monitor me for possible liver damage because that was the maximum allowable dosage.
I began canceling custom art contracts and eventually had to default on all of them.
Finally, with the end of April, the doctor cleared me to start walking, and I was so happy and full of hope that I could go back to work and do something productive. Within four days, on my birthday in fact, I began to feel a grinding sensation in my ankle when I flexed it, but no pain. Concerned, I went to see Dr. “Foot” and he crushed me with the news that my ankle had undetected fractures that were so tiny that they couldn't be seen on an x-ray and in days my ankle had completely destroyed itself.
I was scheduled immediately for more surgery.
After so much hoping and having it dashed repeatedly, I seriously contemplated swallowing all the bottles of painkillers and just checking out. I was just too weary of "fighting the good fight". I don't know whether it was cowardice or just good sense that I didn't.
Three days of examinations at Riverside Hospital showed that the initial infection had weakened my ankle, and was actually eating the bone from the inside out. It couldn't be seen on any x-ray. I woke up a few days later in Grant Hospital's recovery room, after surgery to clean out the infection and to stabilize the ankle.
They'd attached a triangular brace by securing it to my leg just beneath my knee with more screws through the skin into bone. Now I'd have to wear a contraption that had a metal pin driven through where my ankle used to be, sticking out two inches on either side with rods and attachment points sticking straight out of my leg just below the knee.
They couldn't put a cast on it because I had to treat it daily with an iodine solution to keep it from getting infected where the things pierced my skin.
Within a month, I'd fallen twice where the contraption tangled in the legs of my walker, and I landed hard on my knee.
I fractured my leg just above and just below my kneecap, and damaged the kneecap, too. After the area stabilized, the doctor surgically reassembled my ankle like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, then drove a metal rod up through the heel of my foot into my leg, secured it with some screws, and then fused my ankle together into one unmovable piece. I was back in a cast up to my knee.
I gave in and reluctantly applied for Social Security Disability in June, and all my doctors began sending in reports to the government. I was told I'd never walk right again, nor get a job where I'd be weightbearing on my left leg. Because of the cast, they couldn't correct my knee or the fractures in my leg, and they healed together with an 18-degree deviation from my knee to my foot. In other words, my foot now juts outward about 2 inches more than it should.
Also, I'd begun running low on my savings, and had cut back to only using it to send minimum payments on the credit cards totaling $850 a month. To conserve ready cash, I was forced to begin putting the phone, electric, etc., on my credit cards. Then I started selling things to make the rent — things like the big screen TV, the surround sound home theater system, an antique jukebox that I'd had converted to play CDs, video cassette recorders, my new graphics computer, art supplies and equipment, and Sony LCD monitor, all for pennies on the dollar because I needed money fast.
In September, I was told I qualified for Social Security Disability, and they sent me a back-check to June when I'd applied. If I'd listened to my mother, I'd have gotten one back to December. Because I was on workman's comp, I'd only get $425 a month. Lesson learned. I also found out I wasn't qualified for Medicare until I'd been in their system for 25 months because I was under 65.
A great collection of tapestries went next, and I burned copies of a 600 CD collection so I could sell the originals for pennies on the dollar. All my aquariums went, except an 80-gallon I couldn't part with. I thought of starting up my artwork again but the depression took my concentration and creativity, and by then I'd sold all my equipment, and my eye problem was getting to the point where I had to admit to myself that it was getting serious.
I was kicking myself for feeling sorry for myself all the time, but still didn't understand that I was in the throws of a very deep clinical depression. Until you've actually lived through one, it's impossible to describe how depression can disable you completely. I was sleeping almost all the time, and had to really push myself just to do basic household chores. My curtains remained closed for two months without my ever looking out of them. Friends, who quickly tired of the same old tale of woe, began avoiding me.
In October 2005, I was offered a desk job at company headquarters doing data transfers between pizza shops nationwide. It brought me out of my shell. I was wearing a suit and tie, had responsibility, and I had hope and a smile again. In December, I was cleared to start walking on my leg again, but only with the use of a brace that went under my foot and up the back of my leg to behind my knee.
I discovered that since my ankle doesn't bend, if I wore lace up shoes, I'd have to undo them completely every time just to get into them, so I now wear fashionable Velcro strapped ones. I looked into getting into a company sponsored health plan, but it was too expensive and wouldn't cover "preexisting conditions".
With the cast now off, Dr. “Knee”, the knee surgeon, could do arthroscopic surgery to repair post-traumatic arthritis in my knee. I was told the only way to fix the angle of my leg was to replace my knee with an artificial one, but I'd been off my leg so long the bones weren't strong enough to support surgery for that yet, and still aren't.
Since I had to keep my leg elevated, I was also the only one in the office who could put a foot up on the desk and get away with it.
I went into work January 4th and was told my department had been eliminated by budget cuts. I also fell on my knee again, from weakened muscles, but no damage was done, only pain. I went back to feeling useless, and helpless to control my own fate, sitting on the edge of my bed for an hour at a time, just staring at the wall. The debilitating depression returned, and suicide was never far from my mind and sometimes still is. My short-term memory had been affected by the antidepressants. I'm down to a little over $2000 in the bank. It's still difficult for me to venture out of my apartment, much less deal with strangers.
Some friends took me to see Brokeback Mountain and I loved it. I began writing reviews online about it, and eventually a few people at this site said that I might make a valuable contribution here. I've partially snapped out of my mental isolation as I've been able to express myself instead of holding it all in.
With my 51st birthday coming up, I started looking into glasses for my increasing eye problem, and was told "a doctor only needs a day to write a prescription and the next day you have your glasses". I put it off until a couple of weeks beforehand, so it wouldn't be collecting interest on my card until absolutely necessary.
Wrong move.
My father died April 17th, and following the aftermath, I figured I still had a week, plenty of time, but the ophthalmology lab at Ohio State wouldn't write me a prescription for glasses, so I couldn't pass my eye test to renew my license, so here I am — housebound. They said I need thousands of dollars of laser surgery to repair my eyes or go blind. The capillaries in my eyes have progressively gotten worse and are now not only leaking fluids, but solids from my bloodstream causing swelling. I'm working on a charity called Access Health Columbus that hopefully will cover the surgery, or will talk Ohio State into writing off the surgery as a student training exercise at OSU, but so far I haven't heard anything.
Without being able to pass the eye test, my license expired on my birthday Tuesday, May 2nd.
From now on, I'm breaking the law every time I get behind the wheel to buy a prescription or see a doctor. It's illegal to drive with a leg brace, regardless of the fact it's on my left leg and the Sebring's an automatic. I'm driving on an expired driver's license until I can find a way to pass my eye exam to renew it. If someone plows into me in traffic, even if it's not my fault, I'll be cited because of the above.
Even if I wanted to move out (I've lived here nearly 20 years), I couldn't physically move, nor could I afford to rent a truck, come up with a first and last month's rent at the new place, or come up with a security deposit. It's appalling how many friends you lose when you stop hosting poker and billiards parties, and stop taking friends out to dinner.
I didn't realize just how badly my mental state had become until I was told that I was healthy enough to work at a desk and was forced to put in 15 applications for work a week, or face losing my checks... even though I had a left leg that if it were a clock face would read 7:00 o'clock.
I got a chance for an interview at a tech support place a friend worked at locally. I went in all full of hope only to discover that my eyes were so bad I couldn't read the monitor screen they used to test me.
I failed.
Dejected, I headed south on Rt. 71 towards downtown. It's a 12 mile route that I've used literally thousands of times. Half way home I suddenly realized I didn't recognize any of the landmarks, or names of exit signs. Frightened, I took the next exit and stopped at a gas station.
I'd driven downtown and without realizing it in a coma, I turned on to Rt 70 and almost an hour later discovered that I'd made it almost to the Indiana border from central Ohio, without knowing how I got there; and how I did it without wrecking...
This is where the nightmare really started developing. Little did I know that shortly afterward, the incision opened up inside of the cast and became infected, destroying all hopes of the bone healing. That wasn't discovered until three weeks later. Not knowing this, I ignored repeated advice from my mother and friends about applying for Social Security disability or Welfare because I didn't think I needed it and thought that applying for state help was and still is the ultimate in admitting failure.
December 29th the cast came off and the infection was discovered. January 11th, 2005, I went into surgery at Grant Hospital and it was confirmed I was a diabetic. A predicted hour and a half
of outpatient surgery turned into 10 hours. The bone was unsavable and the infection was more extensive than they thought. They had to match and implant a cadaver bone graft in its place. I woke up with three metal pins sticking out through the skin of the right side of my left foot. A bar connected them to hold the implant in place. Inside, I now had a metal plate in my foot from my ankle to my toe with screws into my bones to hold it together.I was warned that the infection was so bad that, unless I started on intravenous daily antibiotics, I'd die in the time it took my blood to circulate. This necessitated a visiting nurse coming once a week to pull a foot-long plastic "PICC" line out of a vein in my bicep leading to my heart, and injecting another in after she changed the dressing. This had a nipple, through which I had to inject myself with drugs and antibiotics three times daily.
Things became necessary, like rearranging the apartment so I could get between the couch and the shelving unit with my walker, and a neighbor tearing down a wall of aquariums just so I could get into the living room. My foot had to stay elevated at all times, so I was told I'd be stuck flat on my back for a few months, and with broken ribs I couldn't use crutches. Then came the Percocet, and Vicodin, you know all the fun stuff you've always been told about, only trouble is, they're only fun if you don't need them, but I did.
I was issued a different kind of walker, that made life easier, and a little more fun too. It was a wheeled contraption that I'd kneel on a padded horizontal support with my sore leg and propel myself forward with my good leg. It was like flying around with on a kid's scooter-Fortunately the thing has a hand brake. This also allowed me to stand in front of the sink or stove without having to try to balance on one foot.Just to make the rent, utilities, basic groceries, and prescriptions that weren't covered (around $1,800), I had to start draining my savings. Since I worked at a job where I earned only partially reported tips, I only got $880 a month to live on. As January went on, there were more surgeries, because the infection affected my bone strength and a 4th pin had to be added to hold everything still and they kept coming loose, which meant more surgeries.
Sleeping with pins and a crossbar sticking out of your foot isn't easy, especially with two cracked ribs. Nightmares and flashbacks started, and I was only getting maybe three hours sleep at a time. Soon I was on antidepressants, and was watching my finances seriously start to dwindle. Especially when the 6-month car insurance came due in March and I also had to buy expensive blood sugar test strips and Glucotrol to control it. I was told to call a few local diabetes associations for help with the expenses, but was told they weren't taking new clients because of City budget cutbacks. I kept up paying $1600 a month on two credit cards, thinking I'd come out of it.
Every third week, I'd see Dr. “Foot”, and he'd say I'd have to wait another three weeks (I'd be back on my feet by January, by early March, by mid April). My eyesight got worse, and with the depression, I couldn't even stand to pick up a pencil to do a sketch or a brush to paint something. As the depression progressed, 40mg of Cymbalta wasn't enough and they increased it to 60mg and had to monitor me for possible liver damage because that was the maximum allowable dosage.
I began canceling custom art contracts and eventually had to default on all of them.
Finally, with the end of April, the doctor cleared me to start walking, and I was so happy and full of hope that I could go back to work and do something productive. Within four days, on my birthday in fact, I began to feel a grinding sensation in my ankle when I flexed it, but no pain. Concerned, I went to see Dr. “Foot” and he crushed me with the news that my ankle had undetected fractures that were so tiny that they couldn't be seen on an x-ray and in days my ankle had completely destroyed itself.
I was scheduled immediately for more surgery.
After so much hoping and having it dashed repeatedly, I seriously contemplated swallowing all the bottles of painkillers and just checking out. I was just too weary of "fighting the good fight". I don't know whether it was cowardice or just good sense that I didn't.
Three days of examinations at Riverside Hospital showed that the initial infection had weakened my ankle, and was actually eating the bone from the inside out. It couldn't be seen on any x-ray. I woke up a few days later in Grant Hospital's recovery room, after surgery to clean out the infection and to stabilize the ankle.
They'd attached a triangular brace by securing it to my leg just beneath my knee with more screws through the skin into bone. Now I'd have to wear a contraption that had a metal pin driven through where my ankle used to be, sticking out two inches on either side with rods and attachment points sticking straight out of my leg just below the knee.
They couldn't put a cast on it because I had to treat it daily with an iodine solution to keep it from getting infected where the things pierced my skin.
Within a month, I'd fallen twice where the contraption tangled in the legs of my walker, and I landed hard on my knee.
I fractured my leg just above and just below my kneecap, and damaged the kneecap, too. After the area stabilized, the doctor surgically reassembled my ankle like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, then drove a metal rod up through the heel of my foot into my leg, secured it with some screws, and then fused my ankle together into one unmovable piece. I was back in a cast up to my knee.
I gave in and reluctantly applied for Social Security Disability in June, and all my doctors began sending in reports to the government. I was told I'd never walk right again, nor get a job where I'd be weightbearing on my left leg. Because of the cast, they couldn't correct my knee or the fractures in my leg, and they healed together with an 18-degree deviation from my knee to my foot. In other words, my foot now juts outward about 2 inches more than it should.
Also, I'd begun running low on my savings, and had cut back to only using it to send minimum payments on the credit cards totaling $850 a month. To conserve ready cash, I was forced to begin putting the phone, electric, etc., on my credit cards. Then I started selling things to make the rent — things like the big screen TV, the surround sound home theater system, an antique jukebox that I'd had converted to play CDs, video cassette recorders, my new graphics computer, art supplies and equipment, and Sony LCD monitor, all for pennies on the dollar because I needed money fast.
In September, I was told I qualified for Social Security Disability, and they sent me a back-check to June when I'd applied. If I'd listened to my mother, I'd have gotten one back to December. Because I was on workman's comp, I'd only get $425 a month. Lesson learned. I also found out I wasn't qualified for Medicare until I'd been in their system for 25 months because I was under 65.
A great collection of tapestries went next, and I burned copies of a 600 CD collection so I could sell the originals for pennies on the dollar. All my aquariums went, except an 80-gallon I couldn't part with. I thought of starting up my artwork again but the depression took my concentration and creativity, and by then I'd sold all my equipment, and my eye problem was getting to the point where I had to admit to myself that it was getting serious.
I was kicking myself for feeling sorry for myself all the time, but still didn't understand that I was in the throws of a very deep clinical depression. Until you've actually lived through one, it's impossible to describe how depression can disable you completely. I was sleeping almost all the time, and had to really push myself just to do basic household chores. My curtains remained closed for two months without my ever looking out of them. Friends, who quickly tired of the same old tale of woe, began avoiding me.
In October 2005, I was offered a desk job at company headquarters doing data transfers between pizza shops nationwide. It brought me out of my shell. I was wearing a suit and tie, had responsibility, and I had hope and a smile again. In December, I was cleared to start walking on my leg again, but only with the use of a brace that went under my foot and up the back of my leg to behind my knee.
I discovered that since my ankle doesn't bend, if I wore lace up shoes, I'd have to undo them completely every time just to get into them, so I now wear fashionable Velcro strapped ones. I looked into getting into a company sponsored health plan, but it was too expensive and wouldn't cover "preexisting conditions".
With the cast now off, Dr. “Knee”, the knee surgeon, could do arthroscopic surgery to repair post-traumatic arthritis in my knee. I was told the only way to fix the angle of my leg was to replace my knee with an artificial one, but I'd been off my leg so long the bones weren't strong enough to support surgery for that yet, and still aren't.
Since I had to keep my leg elevated, I was also the only one in the office who could put a foot up on the desk and get away with it.
I went into work January 4th and was told my department had been eliminated by budget cuts. I also fell on my knee again, from weakened muscles, but no damage was done, only pain. I went back to feeling useless, and helpless to control my own fate, sitting on the edge of my bed for an hour at a time, just staring at the wall. The debilitating depression returned, and suicide was never far from my mind and sometimes still is. My short-term memory had been affected by the antidepressants. I'm down to a little over $2000 in the bank. It's still difficult for me to venture out of my apartment, much less deal with strangers.
Some friends took me to see Brokeback Mountain and I loved it. I began writing reviews online about it, and eventually a few people at this site said that I might make a valuable contribution here. I've partially snapped out of my mental isolation as I've been able to express myself instead of holding it all in.
With my 51st birthday coming up, I started looking into glasses for my increasing eye problem, and was told "a doctor only needs a day to write a prescription and the next day you have your glasses". I put it off until a couple of weeks beforehand, so it wouldn't be collecting interest on my card until absolutely necessary.
Wrong move.
My father died April 17th, and following the aftermath, I figured I still had a week, plenty of time, but the ophthalmology lab at Ohio State wouldn't write me a prescription for glasses, so I couldn't pass my eye test to renew my license, so here I am — housebound. They said I need thousands of dollars of laser surgery to repair my eyes or go blind. The capillaries in my eyes have progressively gotten worse and are now not only leaking fluids, but solids from my bloodstream causing swelling. I'm working on a charity called Access Health Columbus that hopefully will cover the surgery, or will talk Ohio State into writing off the surgery as a student training exercise at OSU, but so far I haven't heard anything.
Without being able to pass the eye test, my license expired on my birthday Tuesday, May 2nd.
From now on, I'm breaking the law every time I get behind the wheel to buy a prescription or see a doctor. It's illegal to drive with a leg brace, regardless of the fact it's on my left leg and the Sebring's an automatic. I'm driving on an expired driver's license until I can find a way to pass my eye exam to renew it. If someone plows into me in traffic, even if it's not my fault, I'll be cited because of the above.
Even if I wanted to move out (I've lived here nearly 20 years), I couldn't physically move, nor could I afford to rent a truck, come up with a first and last month's rent at the new place, or come up with a security deposit. It's appalling how many friends you lose when you stop hosting poker and billiards parties, and stop taking friends out to dinner.
I didn't realize just how badly my mental state had become until I was told that I was healthy enough to work at a desk and was forced to put in 15 applications for work a week, or face losing my checks... even though I had a left leg that if it were a clock face would read 7:00 o'clock.
I got a chance for an interview at a tech support place a friend worked at locally. I went in all full of hope only to discover that my eyes were so bad I couldn't read the monitor screen they used to test me.
I failed.
Dejected, I headed south on Rt. 71 towards downtown. It's a 12 mile route that I've used literally thousands of times. Half way home I suddenly realized I didn't recognize any of the landmarks, or names of exit signs. Frightened, I took the next exit and stopped at a gas station.
I'd driven downtown and without realizing it in a coma, I turned on to Rt 70 and almost an hour later discovered that I'd made it almost to the Indiana border from central Ohio, without knowing how I got there; and how I did it without wrecking...
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