06/12/2025
This is Bob. We are working super hard on fixing Bob's leg. Morgan is his bestie and bestest caregiver ♥️. A lot has gone into repairing his fractured tibia. While I was having another surgery in December for my own leg nonsense, he had the fracture repaired with a plate. He encountered complications from that. Infection🤬. The plate was removed and the leg refractured shortly after that. This case is very personal to me. Many of you know of my journey this past year....between June 2024 and March 2025 I had 8 surgeries on my right ankle. The final surgery was right below the knee amputation March 26, 2025. No regrets. I have a great prosthetist and have been thriving again now that I'm vertical. I can "Susan" with one original leg, but would it be ethical to amputate a kangaroo's leg? Can a kangaroo "roo" with 1 leg? A LOT of thought and planning goes in to cases like this. It involves talking to Australian vets about kangaroo mechanics. Profound gratitude to Andrew Hill in Australia for sending me a magnificent journal article on kangaroo locomotion. Once I said bye bye to my right lower leg and got vertical again, I dug in to come up with a plan to give it my best shot for Bob to keep all his original factory parts. Many exchanges with Andrew Hill again and a long FaceTime chat w Hill Griffin at IMEX to plan the surgery and get all the hardware. I've done LOTS of external fixators, but my previous orthopedic patients have all been no more than 1/4 of Bob's size! My awesome associate, Bairon Madrigal and I dug in on Tuesday April 29th for one of the most physically challenging surgeries I've done in 30yrs. Thank God Dr. Madrigal could provide big muscle help for this! Bob has had ALL the things I could think of to help him heal- hyperbaric oxygen therapy, regional limb perfusion, laser therapy, physical therapy, pain meds, antibiotics PEMF....I guess you could say we threw the kitchen sink at him🤣 All Bob's hardware is out as of last week. Dramatic decrease in swelling this week. Huge callous that feels strong. We are staying with "external coaptation" support, aka a splint, for about another 3-4 weeks.
