A Potted History - Part 1

I could easily fill a book when it comes to my medical history and experiences, it is so vast and complex. For now I’d like to share a potted version to bring you up to speed and hopefully see how my experiences thus far have led to the creation of this blog.

I first broke my left tibia and fibula when I was 8 years old. I’d been playing outside with friends, my foot caught in a piece of broken paving and down I went. We thought nothing of it – it was just an unfortunate accident. I had the standard 6-8 weeks in plaster, it was removed and life should have returned to normal. However I was consistently complaining of being in pain, particularly when walking. My parents queried this at a check-up and were told that I was scared because my leg was a bit weak so it was purely a psychological fear and they should continue to encourage me to walk. Some months later my leg broke again. Just the tibia but in exactly the same place. This raised some alarm as it’s generally considered that once a fracture has healed, the bone should actually be stronger than before and shouldn’t break in exactly the same place. Some tests were ordered but came back clear and we proceeded as before, with treatment for a normal fracture. After slightly longer in plaster I still continued to be in pain once the cast was removed. More time passed and we happened to be visiting family in North Wales: it was a glorious sunny day and my Auntie and Uncle had bought out a paddling pool for me and my cousins to play in. It was only small and there wasn’t much water in it at all. I stood up to get out and the combined force of lifting my leg out and the water draining off it resulted in another fracture. This time my parents were adamant that answers were needed and thankfully the hospital I happened to be taken to were fantastic. In a matter of hours tests and scans were carried out and the conclusion reached that there had never been three separate fractures: it was one that in 18 months had never healed. I had been walking on a broken leg.

My care was transferred from our local general hospital to the specialist Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford. We knew by this time that there had to be an underlying cause for the bone not healing and it was determined that the part of tibia that had broken hadn’t formed properly: when re-uniting it thought it was a joint so instead of the two ends knitting together the bone was healing in two parts and then working as if it was a joint, rubbing alongside one another (hence the pain) and then moving apart when too much force was put through the leg (hence the two additional ‘fractures’).

The malformed section of bone was removed and I underwent a leg lengthening procedure with an Ilizarov fixator. As by now I had a leg length discrepancy due to years in plaster stunting the growth of my leg, this allowed us to lengthen the leg whilst keeping the bone stable and allowing it to heal and strengthen. Unfortunately my bone by now was almost the thickness of a wire coat hanger and after the fixator was removed could not sustain full weight bearing. Luckily a stress fracture was detected before it could completely displace and a second Ilizarov was fitted. This stayed on for much longer, around 14 months and quickly became my version of normal.

Because technically the bone had now healed properly the hope was that as I stopped growing, projected to be around the age of 16, the bone would remain stable and no further treatment would be required. This didn’t quite go to plan …