As I set here at the hospital while my wife prepares for another surgery I can’t help but think about the last 22 years and how hard they have been. This is a story that I haven’t really told to much outside of our family but I think this a good place to start.
It was July 4, 1996 and me and wife Tracy was going to a fireworks show. We had been married for about 5 months at the time and had no children yet. Tracy was 19 and I was 24. It was around 7:00 pm and we were hit head on by a drunk driver. We was in a small car and we was in a big Cadillac. I suffered small injuries but Tracy took the hard hit. The engine was pushed through the dash and collapsed on her legs. It shattered her right hip and broke her right femur.
We both spent the night in the hospital and I had to lay in a bed down the hallway from her while she screamed and cried all night. It was the worst night of my life knowing I couldn’t do anything for her! The next morning I was released and she started what would be the first of many surgeries. Everything was good for the first week and then everything went down hill from there! Her leg became infected and the doctors had to remove all the pins and rods and start over. She was in traction for about 6 weeks before they could put everything back in. So by this time it was Christmas of 1996 and she finally got out of the hospital. This whole time the kid that hit us did no time or wasn’t fined a dime! He finally turned himself in and got 30 days home confinement. What a joke! Oh and he didn’t have insurance either so we couldn’t sue him for her suffering!
Anyway as time went by Tracy got to feel better and got around better. We had our first child in September 1997, second in August of 1998 and third in December 2003.
Fast forward to around 2015 she starts to have trouble again with her hip and leg. She is around 38 at this time and we went to see a doctor about removing the hardware from her leg. At this time she was living a pretty normal life other than a slight limp. At that time the doctor took out the rod that went down her femur and took out the screws that held it in place. The only thing that was left was a large screw that went up through her femoral head. The doctor said she could not get it out and that she left it in. Everything went back to normal again but her pain began to get worse and worse.
By the end of 2016 we started looking for a doctor that would do a hip replacement. We searched for a while without any success because of the infection risk she had. Finally we found a doctor that was willing to do something. He said she had bone spurs in her muscle around her hip and thought removing that would help a lot of her pain. So in January 2017 he did the first surgery to remove the bone pieces and it got infected! She spent over a month in the hospital taking IV antibiotics. He then went back in and took the screw out of her femoral head and that proved to be the hardest surgery yet. He finally let her come home but she had to have a wound vacuum that would help pull infection out. She also had to take IV antibiotics at home.
By this time it is around July 2017 and the wound still hasn’t closed. Since then she has had about 25 surgeries and now can’t hardly get around at all. She has to use a walker to get around and a wheelchair if we go out anywhere.
So now we have a surgery scheduled in March at West Virginia University and it is going to be major! This new doctor is going to remove her femoral head and half of her femur and replace it with a hip spacer that has antibiotics in it. After 6 months if the infection is gone he will then do a total hip replacement. If it is still infected I’m not sure what’s gonna happen.
With all this said it has been a long road for her and hopefully we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!! Just remember don’t ever take anything for granted because it can change in a instant!! Thank you for reading.
