The radiologist said that I needed a plastic or orthopedic surgeon to remove the stick, because there could be complications given the multiple layers of tissue that were penetrated. Appointments with these surgeons are 7 months in advance in Alberta (!!), but my doctor managed to squeeze me in sooner with a local orthopedic surgeon, at the end of the day the following week.
After 17 hours of fasting and a 5-hour wait in the hospital, surgery was canceled due to a disagreement between the anesthesiologist and the surgeon about local vs general anesthetic, and previous advice on the consumption of water on the day of surgery. Fortunately, I got in the following week, and had surgery on Tuesday, Feb. 3rd.
This stick was removed from my leg (click to enlarge, if you can tolerate a close-up):
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When the foreign object was discovered at the radiology clinic in Calgary, I went to the hospital across the road to sit through the emergency queue. The triage nurse strongly recommended that I arrange an appointment with a surgeon through my doctor. When I talked to my doctor (who was quite difficult to reach by phone since his staff insist that doctors “don’t do phone consultations”), he said that he had recently sent a patient with a critical problem to the emergency room in Calgary, and she sat in the hallway for 48 hours before treatment. Given that my injury happened in October and this was January, I could be sitting there for days!
Another thing I took away from the experience is to take the diagnosis of doctors as a best guess. Granted, it is an educated guess, but it is by no means definitive. Trust how you feel more than anything else. You are the only one responsible for your health. My biggest mistake was trusting the 3rd doctor, the one who did the ultra-sound and concluded that there was no foreign body in my leg. Unfortunately, my physician trusted that conclusion too, despite all of the contrary evidence.
The thing that irks me most though, was the first doctor, who failed on at least three counts:
- Missing the giant piece of wood in my leg in the first place. Especially given my hamstring complaints and his little story about the other guy whose doctor left a large stick in the wound. Why didn’t he send me for an ultra-sound right away?
- Not prescribing antibiotics after my being stabbed with a dirty tree branch.
- Sewing up the wound so that, when it did get infected, the fluids went all through my leg instead of draining out the puncture wound.
I plan to go back to the hospital to get the names of the doctors involved, and contact the hospital administration about the whole ordeal. The doctor who did the ultra-sound on me should get some retraining on it’s use before he’s allowed to make further diagnosis with it. It should also be standard procedure that, when one is impaled with something like a tree branch, a radiologist should look for foreign bodies ASAP!
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