the Jogging Accident

the Jogging Accident that Changed My Life

         In late September 1996, I went jogging in the early morning hours. I was living by myself in a big apartment complex in Suburban Virginia. I was working in the Department of State at the Korea Desk and my wife was serving as an Army officer in San Antonio, Texas.

         I went out and started my usual walk/jog following a trial but I took a wrong turn and fell down a ledge and shattered my right heel. I managed to crawl back home called my wife and called my office and then called 9-11. They rushed me to an ER and I was told that I needed immediate surgery. But afterward, it would take four months to recover. I explained to the doctors that I was all alone and would have to do the surgery in San Antonio Texas where my wife was stationed.

         I called my wife and we worked it out. That evening I flew to San Antonio. The next day the Air Force doctors told me that I would have to wait a week for the swelling to go down. Then they would operate. They would be using a new technique – replacing my shattered heal bone with an artificial shark cartridge. Then I would be essentially bedridden and in a wheelchair for four months.

         I made arrangements and my medical nightmare began. I developed a staph infection. They did the second operation, cleaned it all up, and put more shark cartridges in my heel.

         Five months later I was cleared to go back to work.

         On the way to the airport, we had a car crash. I made it the next day despite the weather conditions.

         I stayed in DC going to work on crutches and a cane. Two months later I went to WR for an unrelated issue. The doctor saw that my leg was now infected and I underwent emergency surgery that day. Apparently, the staph infection had been developing behind the shark cartilage and was MDR-resistant to boot. This was starting to become a huge issue for the medical community and has continued to be a problem.

         . To make a long story short I was admitted to the old WR hospital and had 12 more operations. They put me on an IV vancomycin drip. They had to check the levels every six hours – gave me too much it might kill me, not enough I might not kill the staph infection. The levels had to be carefully adjusted.

          I went to and from the library and appointments including PT using a wheelchair. This was before Wi-Fi and I did not have a computer or access to emails or even a private phone. This was before everyone had a smartphone.

          I read over 300 books that year and began writing a daily journal which I have kept up since then.

         In late April, the doctors told me that they had exhausted all options and recommended amputation. I told them to wait until they could speak with my spouse who was the military officer. She arranged emergency leave and we met with the doctors.

         The prognosis was not good.

         Option one amputation of my right leg. But if they waited much longer the staff infection which was now a MDR infection could spread to the rest of my body, and likely kill me.

         Option two – a final risky operation – taking bone from my hip and putting it into my heel. This had been the standard treatment until they started using shark cartridges instead. The problem was that there was only a 40 percent chance it would work.

         I told them.

         “So you can amputate my leg, and I will be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life because you cannot make a prosthetic since my entire leg has to be amputated and even then there is a strong possibility the staph infection could kill me.

         Or you can try this high-risk surgery and hope it works. Do the surgery then.”

         A week after the surgery they wanted to send me home but as a precaution, I would still have to continue using the IV drip. And would have to return twice a day to have them check the status. And I would have to stay at home for two more months.

         My wife told them that it would not work out, since I would have to come and go by metro and bus twice a day. But she would be able to be reassigned starting in June.

         I left the hospital in early June. All told almost nine months in and out of the hospital.

         But there was one more thing that happened. The Internal medicine doctor told me that there was something else going on. They eventually figured out I had a weird parasite I had picked up in Thailand. This parasite was inert and almost undetectable. But if I ever took steroids for any reason, the parasite blows up to the size of a basketball, bursts, and kills you all within half an hour of taking steroids.

         Six months later I developed frozen shoulder syndrome due to excessive antibiotic use. The Army doctors gave me a steroid shot which solved the problem. If that internal medicine doctor had not discovered the parasite I would have died a medical mystery after getting the steroid shot.

         I developed arthritis, fibromyalgia, and hammer toes, (I had to do two operations a few years later. All because of a freak jogging accident that went wrong.

         Note: true story. I have written about this in my blog (The World According to Cosmos) and in my WC portfolio.





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