Loading ...I’ve had my own health experiences in Mercy Hospital in Sacramento at age 17; 6 weeks on my back with my foot in a plastic bag full of Normal Saline and ??? to kill the infection that had developed from the wound across the top of my foot. I could wiggle my toes and watch all the tendons flex in the wound that went all the way across the top of my foot but luckily did not sever any of those 5 exposed tendons.
I had been swimming in the American River about a month before when a small plane flew over and they were yelling “the body, the body” and pointing to a small island in the river every time they made a low pass over the river. A man had drowned in the river the day before and had not been found yet, but they had spotted him from the air and I was close and could see his body…. so I was swimming across to the body when my foot struck something on the bottom of the river which turned out to be an old rusty piece of corrugated roofing tin that had been dumped into the river. My foot went instantly numb and when I looked was bleeding profusely so I abandoned what I was doing and got out of the river and limped to where some friends were sitting. They wrapped my foot up and took me to a doctor who took many stitches in it and said if it doesn’t get infected it should heal okay….but it DID get infected, swelled up and all the stitches ripped out, and I ended up as described above.
I was released from the hospital with a healing open “trough” across the top of my foot and instructions to keep it clean by pouring if full of Hydrogen Peroxide morning and night, letting it foam, and then gently wiping it out with sterile gauze and wrapping it up until it was completely healed. Otherwise I was free to use it again…..but after 6 weeks on my back in the hospital I was hardly able to walk …… but it was Pheasant Hunting Season so I borrowed a 12 guage shotgun and walked the nearby open fields hunting Pheasants….and walked myself back to health.
Turned out that since I was still only 17, all that huge doctor and hospital bill was covered by my stepdad’s carpenters insurance, even though I was no longer living at home. SNG