Before I asked my surgeons to amputate my leg, like, 10 years before, I had a bone transplant. It was the first operation of it’s kind in the UK.
My surgeon had spent time in Boston, Mass. and was determined to apply what he’d learned in the US in the UK. Enter, 19 year old me. Massive allograft (bone transplant) was performed on 10th October 1989.
That’s top half of my right knee joint and femur, up to just over half way up my thigh.
The bone was shipped from the US to Glenfield, Leicester, UK. A man’s knee and femur I was told. I’m tall, it was unlikely that a woman would ever be a bone donor, I was told.
The femur length was good, the knee joint size was not a good fit. I tried so hard, with Physio etc, to make it work. But it never did. I had a knee replacement on the transplant. My femoral artery was severed, accidently, during that op. which resulted in foot drop etc. So another operation lengthened my shortened achilles tendon. Radiotherapy burned and damaged by skin which had already been opened 8 times, resulting in a hole and oozing fluids. Plastics worked to close the hole which re-opened post-surgery.
The pain I experienced walking, sitting, resting, sleeping! My amputation was elective. I had had enough.
Bone transplant, incorporating an articulating joint, was seldom if ever performed again here in the UK.
1998 my elective amputation was performed and I spent one week in hospital.
“Migraine” pain was and still is my biggest fear. But I now call that AVM and associated aneurysm pain.
<3 With love and purpose x