WARNING! Graphic Images Follow!

Now that Scully is home and my family is intact again, I thought it was time to reflect on the injury in pictures. Some of these are hard to view, so consider yourselves warned.

Len took this first picture on my cellphone at the emergency room on March 26, 2007, just hours after my accident. Note I am still in the neck brace and sandwich boards. Frankly, I think I look dead. Thank goodness looks can be deceiving.



Next, here I am in the Intensive Care Unit in the first few days after my accident. Notice the traction stuff? That leads me to the next picture, a close up of the rod they put through my left femur to stabilize my leg. Connected to the rod is the traction system, pulled down by weights at the end of my bed. After my first pelvis surgery, when the nurses accidentally dropped me while transferring me to the potty and re-dislocated my pelvis, the doctors had to add a second set of traction. But this time they went through my tibia, below my knee, because they had already used my femur.

When I was moved to a regular room, I had a lovely view of Atlanta. I don't see it in this picture, but from my room I could see my downtown office building. The other thing you don't see here is the helicopter pad, just outside my window. Since Atlanta Medical Center is a category 2 trauma center, there is a lot of helicopter traffic there, to bring in injured souls. The view was lovely, but the noise could be pretty distracting at times.

After I was in the hospital about a week, bruises started to appear all over me. To illustrate, here is the bruised underside of my arm. I didn't feel pain from the bruising, but the pain may have been masked by the mass amount of painkillers I was taking. Both arms were bruised like this and I had several mysterious bruises on my legs and even hands. Never saw a thing on my neck or face, though. Helmets rule!

Finally, and this is probably the grossest image, this picture of the side of my butt was taken just before the staples were removed from my hip.
This was just a couple weeks ago, just after I returned home. Those first few days were hard physically because I was taking smaller doses of painkillers. They were hard mentally because I really thought that as soon as I returned home I'd be better.

I'm still not there, but I will be.

The wound there is about a foot long and still causes me problems. The scar on my knee looks a lot like this one, just no staples and not quite as long.

Ooffph.


Finally, here I am in my own bed just after I returned from the hospital.

Now, that these pictures are up for the world to view, I can just log on to see how far I've progressed.