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I know it's been a looooooooooooong time since I've been here, and you've probably all forgotten about my rubber chicken-ness (in tutus. Ive discovered that chicken of all sorts, including rubber chickens, are into tutus these days). In case you haven't and are wondering, "what the hell happened?" I was in an accident. On my motorcycle. It involved a guardrail, some gravel, and a right hand turn that I wasn't able to pull off.
That was 2015. At the end of 2016, I got totally tired of sitting around doing nothing, so I had my injured leg amputated. My nasty little infection came back, and I'm currently awaiting a CT scan next month that will determine if I can move on, or have a bit more lower leg amputated. Once I'm healed up and have put some muscle back on my left thigh, I will get back to the tatami.
Of interest to my fellow judoka, when I had my accident, I went up and over the guardrail when my bike released my leg (I was going 25 mph - I was released pretty quickly). I came down, executed a wonderful break fall, and managed to stay on the berm and not go down into the gorge. My helmet didn't have a scratch. My left arm was pretty bruised up, and my lower leg exploded even more, but I was otherwise fine. Break falls - learn them. The only broken bones were below my knee.
For you medical type people, by grinding my lower leg between a motorcycle and a guardrail, I wound up with a MESS IIIc injury. For you non medical people, MESS stands for "Mangled Extremity Scale Score" - isn't that a wonderfully descriptive name?
If you really want to know more, I've put a mess of my Facebook posts from injury through to today into a blog that can be reached at blog. Warning - there's a lot of stuff there. I've kept it relatively gross out free, at least as far as pictures of injury go, but I do talk about stuff. I've been told it's mildly humorous as well.
In case you're wondering, between trying to save the leg and today, with one more surgery (hopefully only one) in my future, I've lost track of the number of surgeries I've had. Thank you infection for increasing the number dramatically. Anyway, my estimates are between 20 and 30, and probably on the lower side of that range.
Anyway, I am back. I will be watching, monitoring, and moderating when other moderators don't get there first.
Oh, and if anybody knows other amputee judoka, put them in touch with me. I'm getting a lot of support from Joe Walters sensei, but would love to meet others. Right now, I'm totally in the dojo of my mind, and in that dojo, everything I dream up works wonderfully. I'm sure the realities of the situation are completely different....
That was 2015. At the end of 2016, I got totally tired of sitting around doing nothing, so I had my injured leg amputated. My nasty little infection came back, and I'm currently awaiting a CT scan next month that will determine if I can move on, or have a bit more lower leg amputated. Once I'm healed up and have put some muscle back on my left thigh, I will get back to the tatami.
Of interest to my fellow judoka, when I had my accident, I went up and over the guardrail when my bike released my leg (I was going 25 mph - I was released pretty quickly). I came down, executed a wonderful break fall, and managed to stay on the berm and not go down into the gorge. My helmet didn't have a scratch. My left arm was pretty bruised up, and my lower leg exploded even more, but I was otherwise fine. Break falls - learn them. The only broken bones were below my knee.
For you medical type people, by grinding my lower leg between a motorcycle and a guardrail, I wound up with a MESS IIIc injury. For you non medical people, MESS stands for "Mangled Extremity Scale Score" - isn't that a wonderfully descriptive name?
If you really want to know more, I've put a mess of my Facebook posts from injury through to today into a blog that can be reached at blog. Warning - there's a lot of stuff there. I've kept it relatively gross out free, at least as far as pictures of injury go, but I do talk about stuff. I've been told it's mildly humorous as well.
In case you're wondering, between trying to save the leg and today, with one more surgery (hopefully only one) in my future, I've lost track of the number of surgeries I've had. Thank you infection for increasing the number dramatically. Anyway, my estimates are between 20 and 30, and probably on the lower side of that range.
Anyway, I am back. I will be watching, monitoring, and moderating when other moderators don't get there first.
Oh, and if anybody knows other amputee judoka, put them in touch with me. I'm getting a lot of support from Joe Walters sensei, but would love to meet others. Right now, I'm totally in the dojo of my mind, and in that dojo, everything I dream up works wonderfully. I'm sure the realities of the situation are completely different....
