In lieu
of discussing injury epi in class last Wednesday, I deemed it reasonable to write
my blog this week on an injury I myself experienced a little over a year
ago. In class we discussed how the word “accident” is politically
incorrect because an “accident” implies that the act is random or unavoidable,
when in reality there is a cause and effect for everything and almost, if not
every “accident,” can be avoided or prevented. Instead, of using the term
accident, it is more accurate to use words such as “injury,” “car crash,”
“collision,” etc. So as for my “injury…”
In late
August, summer of 2012, I had a horrific event take place -- I had a very large
kitchen knife fall onto my right BARE FOOT. At the time I immediately went into
shock, but luckily both my parents were in the kitchen when the event took
place so they were able to assist me. It didn’t bleed too much but,
looking at the cut, my parents and I knew it was serious. My mom took me to a Med Express where they
asked me to move my big toe, and sadly I was not able to do so. As a
result, I was referred to a foot surgeon in fear that I had cut through to a
tendon or worse, bone. Again, I was lucky to have been referred to the
doctor I was. His office was quite nearby and he was able to see me fairly
soon. An x-ray showed the bone was not cut
or broken, but he had me go in for an
MRI that evening to get a look at the tendon before jumping into surgery.
Test results weren’t clear but he felt sure the tendon was at least torn and
that surgery was in order. My doctor told me this not only meant I
had to have surgery, but that after surgery I would not be able to put ANY
pressure on my right foot for the next 6 weeks, and that if I did I could
easily re-injury the tendon, and have to start back at square one with a second
surgery. He temporarily stitched it up and three days later I had surgery
where he discovered the tendon had been completely severed.
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| Injured foot after surgery-- pretty gross! |
Now let me remind you, this all happened in
late August, about a week before it was time to move back to JMU for the fall
of my sophomore year. Knowing I would have to be on crutches for 6 weeks
and that I could easily reinjure myself was extremely nerve racking. I even
debated taking off a semester, but with the support from my friends and family
I decided to take each day as a challenge and came back to JMU on
crutches. Those next 6 weeks of classes were probably the most difficult
6 weeks of my life. I was challenged everyday physically, mentally, and
emotionally. I was in pain often and felt depressed and hopeless. My arms
ached from crutching around campus, heavy backpack on my shoulders, hopping up
and down stairs in buildings with broken elevators, waiting for the disability
bus that sometimes was very late. With
every little bump or stretch, I feared I had reinjured my foot. While I had support from friends, professors,
classmates and my family, it was still a difficult time. When I was not in
class, I was bed ridden and felt trapped. I couldn’t get to the dining
hall or many other places, and was often alone.
Finally, 6 weeks had come and gone and I was off crutches for
good! I did, however, have to go to physical therapy for a few weeks to
regain strength and flexibility in my foot, as the tendon was now shorter and
very stiff from being immobile for so long. Looking back now, it is just
another page in my book of life, but it is certainly a more memorable one, and
with good reason!
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| Crutches didn't stop me from going to the football games! |
Now
looking at the nitty gritty of the epi triad with injury it’s time to see how
my injury could have been prevented and avoided. The environment was the
kitchen, the human was Jenna (me!), and the agent was the knife.
That
day, my parents had been slicing tomatoes for lunch and I went to grab a loaf
of bread behind the cutting board, and knocked the knife right off the counter
and onto my foot. The first thing that could have been changed was not leaving
the kitchen knife on the counter out. The second and probably more important
thing, though, is that I should not have been barefoot in the kitchen knowing
there are knives as well as other sharp objects that can be potentially
harmful. We were also all reaching around each other trying to make our
own sandwiches. We should have
waited. In the end, the injury occurred,
but it is something that could have been prevented had certain factors been
changed.
