AMPUTATION CANCELED
   It was a crisp warm evening in August.  The day before a hurricane had brushed the along the south shore of Nova Scotia.  Although not particularly a powerful storm the tides and storm surge was pretty amazing.  The following day at low tide, some where around 7 pm my brother and sister and I set out to explore the damage done by the high surf.  After a short while of jumping from rock to rock on the retailing wall we quickly discovered how rough the wall had become.  Within and instant the rock shifted and done between the rock wall i fell. My weight and the shifting of the rock I had jumped on caused several large boulders to crush in around my right leg.  I was stuck, at first it didn't hurt to much, but quickly i began to realize that something was wrong. 
   My brother quickly came to help, but I was stuck, the weight of the wall was crushing in on my leg.  After a few minutes my brother run for help, I needed to get out of their.
  About an hour and half later I would find myself in the emergency room.  Although in a fair amount of pain it was odd to realize that none of it was coming from the area in which the boulders had crushed.  I actually had no feeling at all in the leg from the top of the knee down.  Only later would i find out why the top of my leg and back hurt so much. 
  About an hour later the Doctors at our local emergency department realized i needed to see a surgeon.  Our little local hospital had no one qualified to look at my leg and fix what was wrong.  They thought i had probably damaged a ligament or two.
  An hour later i find myself at the QEII Emergency room in Halifax Nova Scotia. Once their I was assessed. A few hours later after a multitude of test and seeing several doctors and surgeons the news came in.
Into my room came three nursers the surgeon and a doctor, while the doctor is quickly explaining what is going on, one nurse is drawing blood, another putting in a 3 IV's and the third is getting me to sign paperwork as the Surgeon explains to me, that i need immediate surgery on my leg if their is a chance to save it. Which led to my immediate response of “WHAT” they would go on to explain i was suffering from a sever case of Compartment Syndrome ( Insert Link Hear ) and that the major nerves in my right leg had been crushed and severed. (Compartment Syndrome is the result of a crush injury, where your muscles literally rupture under pressure and you bleed internally. ) Complicating mater worse was the fact that all the muscles from my right knee to my foot had sustained full rupture. They explained that their is a high possibility that i might not wake up with my leg, and off to surgery I went.

I don't really remember to much of what the next few days were like. I can vaguely remember my family visiting, I do remember the first time i was coherent enough and reached down to see if my leg was still their. It was, just it was wrapped in bandages that were about 2 feet thick. Over the course of a few days they would slowly close up my leg with staples. I had to massive incisions, reaching from my knee cap down to the ankle on each side of my leg.
The Surgeon would explain each day a little more about what was going on. The most important thing at the point was to keep infection away. I would find out that they had to remove about 30% of my muscle from my calf, and perform 6 bypasses to the arteries in my leg. They were also not able to save the nerves that provide sensory perception to the leg from the knee down.
After about a week, I would be heading home. The outlook from the doctors was lets take it day by day.
I never felt any pain in my leg from the knee down, no nerves to tell me if anything was wrong or hurting their. But the pain in my thigh and back would more than make up for it. You see when you sever nerves, well all I am going to say is their is a lot of pain involved for a long time. I would learn to love, on second thought come to depend on heavy daily doses of Demoral, Celebrex, Gravol, and antibiotics. More to come...