Heather's Journey
After a tragic accident, Heather made a turning point decision to have her left leg amputated and replaced with an osseointegrated implant.
I liked that it was going to be more convenient.. that to me that just felt more like it would be my leg up to this point.
In July 2018, Heather and her a husband were returning from a celebration of their youngest son’s graduation in Portsmouth. Near Weymouth, they were involved in a road traffic accident. Sadly, Heather’s husband passed away at the site of the crash and Heather suffered from multiple severe injuries including a fracture of her left ankle. After initial treatment at Southampton General Hospital, Heather tried to recapture her former quality of life. Unfortunately, this proved impossible. Instead, she became increasingly more anxious and even the simplest of activities would trigger a panic attack. Her problems were made worse by constant pain in her left ankle which became a constant reminder of her accident. The pain meant that she was unable to walk any distance and she usually needed the support of others to get around in and outside of her home, to manage her activities of daily living for even routine tasks like taking her dog for a walk. This resulted in complete loss of her independence. Heather told her surgeons that this was the most difficult thing for her to accept after her accident.
After a lot of independent research and with the help of her case manager, she decided that the only way to get rid of the pain from her left ankle was to undergo an elective below knee amputation. However, she was also conscious of the fact that many patients who undergo a below knee amputation end up having to put up with persistent pain, as a result of the socket that is used to secure a prosthesis to the residual limb. Therefore, she also decided that she wanted to undergo simultaneous treatment with an osseointegrated implant. This would allow her to undergo just one operation where she went to sleep with a painful foot and ankle and woke up without the painful limb and with an osseointegrated implant placed into the residual limb. This would allow her to begin immediate rehabilitation using a bone-anchor secured prosthetic limb.
To help her confirm that this decision was sound, she attended several clinics with the RelimbTM service at the Royal Free Hospital. This included attending a Relimb MDT during which the particulars of her case were reviewed by surgeons, prosthetists, psychologists, anaesthetists and others, to ensure that all aspects of her care could be managed safely and effectively, during and after surgery. Once Heather was confident that her chosen course of treatment would achieve her goals, she underwent surgery. At surgery in February 2022, Heather had her left leg amputated below the knee. Simultaneously, a bone-anchored implant was placed into the residual tibia and nerve transfers were performed to prevent her from developing troublesome neuroma or phantom limb pain. She started her rehabilitation almost immediately after she was discharged from hospital and was walking with a prosthesis attached to the bone-anchor by 6 weeks after surgery.
At a conference held only 5 months after this surgery, Heather was given pride of place as a guest-speaker. Importantly, by that stage, Heather was completely pain-free and able to walk up to the podium, confidently, without panicking in front of the assembled crowd and without crutches. When asked, Heather said that this is what her husband would have wanted for her.