Day 657 – The Doctor’s Prognosis, Life Lessons Learned The Hard Way – Wisdom Unplugged

Wisdom-Trek

Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy Welcome to Day 657 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom The Doctor's Prognosis, Life Lessons Learned The Hard Way – Wisdom Unplugged Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is day 657 of our trek, and it is time for the 6th and final installment of a special series of stories that have chronicled my recent accident and recovery as we trek “Life Lessons Learned the Hard Way.” This accident is a major life event that will change life for me for several months to come. In fact, I would say that it will certainly impact me for the remainder of my life. It is my hope and prayer that as I share that it will also positively impact your life. I have often said, we must accept and live life as it truly is, not as we wish it to be. We don’t always know or understand what will become of the uphill climbs and treacherous downhill slopes that we encounter on life’s trek. The key is to learn from these events and allow them to effectively become a part of our living legacy, which will positively impact our lives and the lives of all those whom we impact. For our final special series of Wisdom Nuggets episodes, we will look at... The Doctor's Prognosis - Life Lessons Learned the Hard Way If you would like to catch the first four episodes of this series go to Day 645, Day 647, Day 650, Day 652, or Day 655. I ended Day-655 with my story of recovery at home with my hemoglobin still low, but on the rise and feeling a little better each day. After the positive results from my blood test, our next major event was the follow-up appointment with our surgeon on Wednesday. The incisions appeared to be healing well but were covered up since the surgery, so we really did not know what they looked like. Also, my leg between my hip and my knee was still swollen, and the bruises were working their way to the surface. The bruises were large, dark, and covered fairly big splotches of my leg. Since I had primarily been using the walker at home, we decided to take it to the appointment although I was not heavily relying on it for walking. Since the surgery, we were instructed to put no more than 50% of my body weight on the leg that had been broken. We did not have a lot of details on exactly what the surgery entailed, so we were very interested in getting more information. We first had to get four X-Rays of my leg, and then we met with the surgeon. He said I looked remarkably well and indicated that the leg appeared to be healing rapidly. He showed us the x-rays, and we discovered that he had inserted a rod the entire length of my femur from the hip ball joint down to my knee. On the upper end was a large screw going through my femur and the rod and attaching it to the hip ball joint. The primary fracture of the femur bone was right below the ball. On the bottom end of the femur right above my knee was another, slightly smaller screw securing the rod in place. There were a couple of smaller fragments on the upper end, but the surgeon indicated that God would fuse those back where they belonged. I have inserted a couple of x-rays picture in today’s wisdom journal below. Dr. Krivchenia told us that we could have the rod and screws removed after two years, if we chose to, but they could stay in place the remainder of my life without complications. Next came the removal of the bandages from the three incisions on my legs. Since they had become quite uncomfortable, this was a relief. The roughness I had previously felt under the bandages turned out to be metal staples holding the incisions closed. The top incision above my hip socket where he inserted the rod was about two inches in length and contained 14 staples. The middle incision where he inserted the upper screw was about 1 ½ inches in length and contained 8 staples. The lower incision right above my knee where he...