Goodbye foot. Hello Peg Leg.
Disabled Veteran Austin McGlaun sustained several IED-blast injuries while deployed in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division. Unfortunately, the combination of neuropathy, bone deformation, soft tissue trauma, and blood supply damage have culminated in repeated infections and sepsis that necessitated amputation below the knee of his right leg on 12/10/2021. Please visit Austin’s Caring Bridge site for updates. https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/austinspegleg
To donate to his GoFundMe, visit https://gofund.me/fc3651f7
I won’t offer my condolences, I’m sure you’ve had more than your fill. I WILL say I understand the pure hell of nerve and bone pain vs pretty much any other kind. I was born with a genetic disorder that creates defective connective tissue (flexible, firm anchoring, and all types in between affecting all body systems, most obviously joints called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome). I have all range of motion from my muscles (can’t feel a stretch ever), but can stretch my tendons & ligaments till they start tearing cuz they don’t hold up like they’re supposed to & my muscles don’t even feel a stretch. That means the nerves stretch too, like sciatic & ulnar, and my joints come completely apart, bend totally wrong ways, and dislocate constantly by accident. I had to have surgery to kind of “re-attach” my shoulder after it had dislocated and been pulled out (pulling open heavy doors at stores) so often it just stayed stretched and dangling out of the socket with the ulnar nerve pulled about 2.5 in too far/long by the distance and the bone grating whenever my arm pushed up against it wrong. 8 month recovery and I was told it would never last with my condition, they’d have to do it again in a few years max. I outlasted the estimate but I’m getting there again soon after 6 years, but it NEVER stopped hurting & causing problems including permanently damaging my nerve and making it float around a bit so I have to be careful about it getting trapped between the bones in my elbow.
I’m not comparing our issues, I refuse to do that with my condition affecting people so differently and everyone having higher or lower tolerances for different problems (I would rather hurt than vomit for instance) so please don’t take what I said that way, just that I can understand hating what’s happening with your body, the pain of it, and not having any control over the progression or outcome, especially when there’s literally no treatment for your problem, just aids to help the symptoms (you can’t get your leg back, I can’t fix the wrong genes and make them right, we both just get “crutches” to help a bit with the end result)