Untitled Document

Updates on Susan

Let me say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU from the whole family. We have been absolutely overwhelmed and deeply touched by your kindness and generosity. We always told people we loved Saratoga and had a great group of friends here, but I never could have guessed how lucky we are. If there is a silver lining in this whole mess, that is it. The meals have been amazing. I have never eaten so well or so healthy. The kids have been having a great time going to friends' houses. Susan jokes that if this keeps up, we may push her off a cliff every summer.

November 29

I have not been great about keeping up with the medical updates. In April, she had another surgery on her elbow to remove the pins which were starting to come out. A fairly minor affair relatively speaking. In June, Susan had a hip replacement. It is pretty gorey procedure where they cut off the top of your thigh bone and put a big titanium rod in its place, and the next day tell you to start walking. If there is an upside to all this, it is that Susan has developed a very high pain threshhold and willingness to take pain meds which made her rehab much easier. The day after the procedure she was walking around with a walker and the 2nd day with just a cane. As she started to walk more and more to strengthen the hip, unfortunately, the ankle bone, the talus, started to act up again which limited her walking to about 8 blocks a day. So I walked with kids on Halloween, and Susan stayed home to give out candy. She is scheduled to have another surgery on December 8 where our good friend Dr. Levine will drill out the dead bone parts in the talus and then drill some tiny holes to encourage blood flow. It is done on an outpatient basis, but will mean another 4 weeks of being on crutches followed by more physical therapy.

March 9 The Upside of Being Stuck at Home for 8 Weeks

If there is one upside, it is the amount of time Susan has been able to spend with the kids instead of commuting to Albany and working every day. They get off the bus at 3:30 every day and spend the next 2 hours playing games, reading books, eating cookies, and painting rooms. The kids are amazingly resilient about the whole affair. For example, Susan has become a fabulous hopper since she hates using crutches. Last week I came home and they were all jumping around on one leg, pretending they too had a broken leg.

The Calendar for helping hands is at http://email.calendars.net/greg_g

February 23 What You Can Do for Susan

Many of you have asked if there is anything they can do to help Susan. Especially our friends who are far away. Well, I have finally discovered something that you can do that would dramatically improve Susan's spirits. Vote for Ace Young on American Idol.

February 20, Like Daughter, Like Mother

After a giant windstorm knocked our power out for 48 hours, we beat a hasty retreat to Susan's parents in NJ. While taking out the recycling, Susan's mom missed a step and fell very hard at the bottom of the stairs. Ellen insisted she was fine, but at 11pm I took her to the emergency room for x-rays. It was a severe sprain of her right ankle, so she too is on crutches, can't drive, and has to lie around with her ankle elevated. She is hoping to make a quick recovery since they are heading to Tampa for Yankee Spring Training next week. It never stops. But on the positive side, I am getting very good at dealing with ER personnel. I also took a couple of funny pictures of mother and daughter on crutches that I will post after they get developed.

February 8, 1 Giant Step Forward, 2 Modest Steps Back = A Lifelong Condition

Susan’s ankle-talus fusion surgery on Friday, February 3rd went very well. Dr. Levine took a small pancake size bit of bone from her shin bone, ground it up, and placed it between the talus and heel, took out the old 3 screws that held the talus together, drilled a series of little holes to encourage blood flow to the talus, and then put in two large screws (3.5 inches long) to fuse the two bones together. The net effect of the medical procedure is to make the talus and heel one big bone. He also cut off a stray bit of bone on the side of her talus that was causing her foot to turn inside. He was very positive about the surgery and felt it went well. When it heals, she will be able to move her right foot up and down and walk normally on level ground, but she won’t be able to move it left or right. We are hopeful that this will be the last we hear of the ankle, but it is still at risk for avascular necrosis, bone death to me and you, long term, but we can’t go there for now. My uncle and I had a good laugh in the waiting room thinking that the doctor was going to come out and say "The bad news is we had to amputate her leg and give her a peg leg. The good news is she gets a free parrot."

She has to keep her foot elevated for the next 2 weeks, no weight bearing for 6 weeks, and no driving for 9-10 weeks. So she will be really bored. We have already upped her Netflix subscription to 5 movies from 3, and got a wireless router so she can surf the internet from the couch. The doctor also prescribed a generous allotment of the best pain medicine modern medicine has created to keep her ankle from hurting and her mind in a soothing haze. Visitors, phone calls, video suggestions, or emails are always welcome.

On the negative side, Susan’s hip and pelvis had been hurting her quite a bit as she started to do more walking, to the point that it actually hurt more than the ankle. Dr. Helfet looked at her hip and pelvis x-rays and saw signs of early arthritis, caused probably by deterioration of the cartilage caused by her fall. She will start taking an anti-inflammatory drug (Celebrex) after the ankle heals to alleviate the pain and maybe some cortisone shots as well. However, she will probably need to have her hip replaced sooner rather than later. The recovery time for that operation is 3 months.

Also, on Monday, Susan was to have the veina cava filter, which was put in to prevent blood clots in Reno, removed. Unfortunately, it probably should have been removed several months ago and is now stuck. Susan said it was the weirdest thing that has ever been done to her. They put a catheter in her carotid artery and wound it through her body to the filter using a fluoroscopy machine and dye. The doctors tugged away for 40 minutes, but it was stuck and so it shall remain until the end of her days. She said it felt like someone tugging on her kidney, which I guess it kind of was. Of course, the computers went on the fritz and turned off, so she had to sit there for 10 minutes with this wire sticking out of her neck, while the doctors left the room. The downside of the filter being stuck is that she will probably need to take a drug called cumadin (sp?) for the rest of her life, which requires weekly blood work.

So, this was the weekend were the reality of her accident being a life long condition really set in. Susan's spirits are excellent considering everything. I am more bummed out about it all.

Happy New Year, January 4

With the end of the semester crunch, I have gotten a bit behind in updating Susan's medical page. Now that my grading is done, I have some time to update the site. Susan is in the "long road" part of her recovery where there is minimal change amidst much drudgery. She has been working out and doing her rehab very hard. She is up to walking almost 2 miles on the treadmill, though she says it is going as slow as possible and she holds on with both hands to keep the weight off her bad ankle. The purpose of all her walking was to see if the ankle, specifically the talus bone, was going to function and be pain free. The talus is the key bone that links the leg to the foot as you can see from the two pictures below. The problem with Susan's talus is that it is a sub-talus fracture, which means that the bottom part of the talus has not healed well and the bone rubs with other bones when she walks. If you guessed that it hurts, you are correct.

In looking at the above picture, the bottom part of Susan's talus bone has not healed well and is rubbing against the calcaneus bone. When you consider that she fell 30 feet onto stone and basically landed on her right foot, it is not surprising that the bottom of the talus is a mess. When you look at the x-ray and cat scan, you can see that there are lots of little bits of bones floating around. Unfortunately, after many miles, it has become clear to us and the doctor that her talus bone is not healing, and needs to have the fusion surgery with Dr. David S. Levine at the Hospital for Special Surgeries in New York.

As you can see from his home page, Dr. Levine is an outstanding surgeon. What you can't see from his page is that he has a rare combination of medial skills as well as a great bedside demeanor. Susan will go in for the talus fusion surgery on February 3. It is a pretty complicated surgery, and we are not quite sure what the future limits on her mobility will be. However, since she can't walk on it now and it hurts a lot, it is the only alternative. The surgery is supposed to remove most of the pain, although she will still face the possibility of arthritis and avascular necrosis down the road.

During the procedure, she will also have the veina cava filter, which was put in to prevent blood clots in Reno, removed. After the surgery, she will be non-weight bearing on her right ankle for 6-8 weeks, which means no driving and using crutches in winter in upstate NY, neither of which is great, followed by a couple of months of more phystical therapy. Until then, Susan continues to walk around with her cane, unless the kids or I have started to play with it despite being told countless times that it is not a toy. Her range is still fairly limited, since her leg hurts more as the day progresses. Also, she is leery of the ice and slipping and falling.

In other medical news, the pelvis and hip bones are healing well. Dr. Helfit told her to walk as much as possible to build up strength in the hip, although it is hard to do this with the bad ankle. Susan also had the three screws removed from her elbow, which was good since they were starting to stick out when she bent her elbow. The surgery has significantly reduce the pain in her elbow, which is now more or less fully recovered. She can only bend it about 160 degrees, but that is probably as good as it will get.

She goes to the periodonist on Jan 5 to have a post put in where her broken tooth was as a precursor for putting in a fake tooth. Despite the kids lobbying for a gold tooth, Susan has opted to go with a natural white one, though that will have to wait until the post becomes firmly embedded in the jaw bone, sometime in March.

Despite the ongoing medical treatments, physical therapy, and persistent amounts of pain, Susan has continued to be extremely positive about everything and very determined to recover. While she was not able to go skiing with the family at the nearby Willard mountain (go here to see Will and I getting off the new chairlift), she did hobble up through ice and snow to the bottom of the mountain to watch the three kids schuss down, despite the grave danger from wayward snowboarders. She has also played more Uno, Old Maid, and Go Fish in the last month than she has in her life. While many people might put off studying for her nursing exams until their physical situation was more settled, Susan has been studying hard for her NYCLEX exams, like the nursing equivalent of the bar exam, which she takes at the end of January. She was supposed to take them about 3 weeks after her accident, and thus has had to relearn everything about the digestive, respiratory, etc systems.

While the pain, uncertainty, and incovenience of everything sometimes get her down, I never cease to be amazed by her resilience and spunk in the face of adversity. You can always email her directly at ssteer@skidmore.edu

Merry Christmas, Hello Emergency Room, Who Likes Cake Dec 25

As if Susan did not have enough medical problems, she got her hand caught in the mixers of a Kitchen Aid mixer making a chocolate rum cake on Christmas afternoon. We both really thought that she had broken a couple of fingers on her left hand, which is also her cane hand. We quickly dropped the kids off at the neighbors and rushed off to the ER. It brought back some unpleasant memories, standing outside an ER and calling her parents on the cell phone to provide medical updates. As Yogi Berra would say, "It was like deja vu all over again." Fortunately, the fingers, while pretty gnarled and twisted, were just badly bruised. After dropping Susan off at home, I picked up the kids. By the time I was home, the cake was in the oven, the dishes were in the sink, and the Kitchen Aid mixer was in the garbage. And in case you were wondering, the chocolate run cake was delicious. Here is a tasty chocolate rum cake recipe.

Doctors, Doctors, Doctors Oct 24

Susan sees a lot of doctors, in addition to physical therapy three times a week. In the beginning of the month, she had her broken tooth removed by a periodontist, who happens to be a big time mountain climber and has a somewhat morbid curiousity in the details of Susan's fall, but who we really like. He said he had never seen a tooth so perfectly cut horizontally in half. Unfortunately, the jawbone around where the tooth was is still too unstable to hold a post for the new tooth so she will have to go back in 3 months to get that done, and then go to the dentist in another 3 months to get the actual new tooth.

We also have made 2 trips to NYC to the Center for Special Surgery to see an ankle specialists and a acetablum/poly-trauma specialist as well. The ankle guy, Dr Levine, was very happy with the flexibility that Susan has gained in her foot, and her ability to hobble around on it. He told her to start aggressively doing physical therapy with it, including working her way up to using an elliptical treadmill. His precise diagnosis was, "Either the ankle will work, or it won't." The point of all the PT is to see whether she will be able to use the ankle without it hurting or not. If it hurts, she will need another more extensive surgery. We go back to see him just after thanksgiving. Unfortunately, right now the ankle has been hurting in a bone on bone kind of way according to Susan. On the major positive side, Dr. Levine said Susan could start driving, which is a dramatic improvement in her quality of life and our need to prevail on friends for rides to rehab three times a week.

Six days later we went back to NYC to see a Dr. Helfit about her hip/pelvis and elbow. He thought the x-rays for both looked great, and also told her to do aggressive PT. He said it was conceivable that she could be back to work after the new year as long as the hip was not in pain (the ankle is a separate story of course). That was great news, although he also said it takes 18-24 months for the bones to fully heal and to know what the final end point will be for her recovery. The other important bit of info we learned was that the filter that was put in Susan's minor vena cava back in Reno, has to come out within a year, or else you can have really bad things happen. Lucky we found that out. So, Susan is getting the name of a vascular surgeon in Saratoga to take that out sometime over the next couple of months. Susan is also going back to NYC on Friday, Oct 28, to have some minor surgery on her elbow to take out the pin which is starting to protrude and hurts quite a bit. I am afraid this is the start of a second round of surgeries to tie up assorted loose ends, so to speak.

We also just got the itemized bill from the Washoe Medical Center in Reno for Susan's 13 day stay, 9 days in the ICU, 4 in orthopedics. The grand total- $186,000! And that doesn't include the doctors' fees. Thankfully, we only had to pay $200. If I was in our HMO instead of Blue Cross, I would have had to pay 10% or 20% as a copay. Hello bankruptcy. Even more scarey, we found out we were billed $8,000 since they had to open the coding cart, which they only do if the patient's heart stops. However, no one ever told me about this, so we don't know whether it actually happened or it is a billing error.

Visit to NYC September 8

What a great visit. We went to see Dr. Levine an ankle and foot specialist at the Center for Special Surgeries in NYC to look at Susan's talus that was not healing. I knew we were in the right place when I looked around the waiting room and saw 10 patients with casts on their right ankles. Dr. Levine was amazing. He spent 30 minutes with us, and did a phenomenal job of explaining what he saw in the x-rays and cat-scans of her talus fracture. The top part of the talus, which connects the ankle to the leg, has healed nicely, which means Susan will be able to move her foot up and down. The bottom part which connects the ankle to the foot, looks a little out of alignment and like there are bits of bones that are not connected to anything (crunchy is how he described it). His prescription is to start making the ankle weight-bearing and doing extensive physical therapy for the next 3 months. Either it will be pain free and regain flexibility or it will hurt and not be flexible. If it's the latter, then he will perform a fusion surgery where the talus bone is fused to the heel and metatarsal bones. She would lose much of her ability to move her foot left and right, but would still be able to move it up and down, and it would be pain free. The visit provided tremendous peace of mind for both of us. We now have a great diagnosis of her talus, a blueprint for her medical care, and a ttimetable for best and worst case scenarios for recovery.

The Girls' First Day of School, September 7

Today was Emily and Tess's first day of school. It was a very emotional day for Susan to be there since we had both worried whether she might be able to make it. It made her very greatful for how far she has come in her recovery. Of course, Emily and Tess were the first two kids to go running into the school.

Medical Update, September 1, 2005-- Good news, bad news

The good news is that Susan’s pelvis is healing nicely and her right elbow is healed enough to be weight bearing. This means that she can start using crutches, which in turn means she can get up and down stairs. It is now much easier for her to get into friend’s houses that don’t have ramps or upstairs in her own house. It also means she can start doing physical therapy 3 times a week. It is going to be pretty strenuous since 2 ½ months of zero physical activity have resulted in the almost complete atrophying of her arm, leg, and abdominal muscles.

The bad news is that the talus bone in her ankle is still not healing. The doctors have warned us that this is one of the three worst bones to break, since it has a lot of cartilage and thus bad blood flow. The break can cut off the blood flow, resulting in AVN, which is a fancy term for bone death. She is getting a CAT scan next week to see if anything is happening that the X-ray is missing. The doctor said we have 3 scenarios—it is healing, nothing has happened (we wait another 4-6 months to see if it does heal), or it is separating in which case they need to get bone from her good hip and do a bone graft for the ankle to try to get the talus to heal. The worst case scenario is the bone graft fails, in which case they would fuse the ankle and talus into a permanent 90 degree angle. We are going to New York City to the Center for Special Surgery to see a Talus expert to get a second opinion this Thursday, which also happens to be the first day of classes for me. Not a great way to start a semester, but the next appointment was months away.

Susan has taken the mixed news fairly well. She is very excited to be able to be out of her hospital bed downstairs and sleep upstairs in her own room. She can also now wheel herself around with her two hands and do far more things for herself. However, the prospects of being confined to a wheelchair or crutches for a lengthy period is very, very depressing. Especially since the house will be empty with the kids at school and me at work. So, please call and make day visits to keep her spirits up.

What Happened

A lot of our friends have asked what happened and I thought I would provide this thumbnail sketch of the accident.

Susan I were out in Tahoe for a wedding and staying at the Sugar Bowl Inn, a ski resort. It was a beautiful day and decided to hike the nearby Mount Judah. It was a beautiful hike, very unlike the Adirondacks, very dry, not many trees, and a snow drifts here and there. We got to the top and had a nice picnic overlooking Donner Lake and some amazing views of the surrounding mountains and pacific trail. We were talking about what a great year it had been, with Susan graduating from nursing school and getting her dream job at Albany Med in the labor and delivery ward, the girls going to kindergarten, the family trip to Disney, and our trip to New Orleans and now Tahoe. After lunch, Susan suggested trying to find a quicker way down. We started looking on the other side of the mountain. I was about 15 feet from Susan, and looked over and saw her standing very close to the edge of a cliff to see if there was a way to climb down. I was very nervous because she was so close and turned away. When I looked up, I saw her falling down in slow motion backwards over the edge of the cliff. I had a sense of disbelief and then horror when I realized what had happened. It was hard to believe that she had fallen off the cliff, since your brain tells you that people don’t fall off of cliffs. I heard nothing for about 2 or 3 seconds and then a loud thud followed by silence.

I called her name frantically and got no reply. There was no way I could climb down or even see her from where I was. I started shouting for help, but I was all alone. I then ran back along the trail and then around to the foot of the cliff where she had fallen, about 200 yards. When I turned the corner, she was about 50 yards away, lying on her stomach with a big circle of blood on the rock below her. When I got to her, she was unconscious, barely breathing, with a deep hole in her right temple and her chin more or less pulled off her jaw bone. I was sure she was going to die right there in my arms, and started to freak out. I then had a huge surge of adrenalin and realized that I had to keep it together if she was going to have any chance at living. I remembered we had our cell phone in the backpack and called 911. Amazingly, I had a signal. I told the rescue team where we were and told them how critical the situation was and that we needed a helicopter rescue. After 5 minutes or so, Susan regained consciousness, but was in a state of shock and extreme pain. It took about 30 minutes for the helicopter to fly over us, but there was no place to land except at the ski resort 3 miles away at the bottom of the hill. The helicopter was also confused at first since I had told them we were on Mount Judah, when in fact we were on Donner Summit, as in the Donner Party. (There is no small bit of irony there since Susan is obsessed with the Donner Party). Those were two of the longest hours I will ever know. After an hour, three hikers from California found us and were a huge help in helping me keep Susan from falling off the ledge where she was laying and in trying to keep her spirits up. These guys were real life-savers. I still get the tingles when I think about these good Samaritans.

After 1 ½ hours after the helicopter flew over us, the paramedics arrived. They put her on a spinal board and gave her a couple of shots of morphine to quell the pain. Another helicopter came and lowered the burrito, a big red duffel bag, to carry her about 75 feet up into the helicopter. For those of you who have never been rescued by a helicopter, let me tell you the downward force of the air almost knocks you down and the noise of the blades is deafening. It is also very scary to watch someone you love go up in the air closer to the blades. I was all ready to be raised into the helicopter, but it then flew off. I then had to hike back down the mountain by myself and drive the 1 ½ hour drive to Reno to the hospital.

July 21 A Good Day with the Doctor

A great day. We went to the doctor down in Albany to take the stitches out of her right foot where one of the operations was. It ended up being a great visit. We got to see all the x-rays for the first time. Suffice it to say, she will need a card to make it through airport security. Do you know what metal chains for hanging gardening baskets look like? Her right pelvis looks like it has two of them in there. There were also 3 big 2 ½ inch screws in her right ankle, and some screws and wires in her right elbow. As they looked at the x-rays, the doctor said to his resident, “That is a perfect treatment of a talus fracture, excellent job on the pelvis, very tricky.” We were always bullish on our Reno doctors, but it is nice to have another medical professional say so.

We also had a number of lingering concerns addressed.
Q. Why does the top of Susan’s right thigh hurt at the slightest touch, but not the bottom?
A. The sciatic nerve had to be moved during the pelvis operation, and thus her pain/nerve endings in her leg are out of wack.

Q. Is one of the metal pins poking out of her elbow?
A. Yes, but it isn’t uncommon, and will be removed at a later time on an outpatient basis.

The other great thing was the doctor took the cast off of her foot and arm, so she has no casts whatsoever, but just looks like a person in a wheelchair. It is not as dramatic a look as when she had the cast and sling, but not having the cast makes it easier for her to lift her right foot which helps with getting in and out of bed or the car. She can also take a shower without wrapping her leg in plastic. The only downside is that she feels very vulnerable about her right foot getting hit.

The final positive aspect of her visit is that the doctor cleared her to start doing more range of motion physical therapy with her elbow, pelvis, and ankle/foot. She is still non-weight bearing on all three and will be “for many months” according to the doctor. But, having PT to do gives Susan something to do to feel like she is making progress, will prevent stiffness later, and helps increase the blood flow to all three areas. Evidently, the talus (ankle bone) is one of 3 bones you don’t want to break in your body (the dr didn’t say what the other two are) because it has such poor blood flow. After a fracture like Susan’s, it is “up to god” whether the blood flow will return. If not, then the bone will die which is a bad thing that we are not thinking about until we have to. Actually, that isn’t true. Susan spent about an hour last night on-line looking up talus fractures, which is more than enough time to give yourself a big case of the heebie-jeebies.

Later in the day, Susan rallied to come to Will’s parents day at Camp Northwoods at Skidmore. It was great to see all the well-wishers though I think Susan was over-whelmed by the end. I am of course the biggest worry-wart, and was terrified some 8 year old would accidentally crash into her newly cast-free leg.

July 19 Update on the Kids
A lot of people have asked how the kids are doing. The short answer is great. They have a great time at Greenberg and Camp Northwoods, and both places have “found” extra openings for the kids in August. They love it there, which makes it that much easier to drop them off every morning.

Tess “Mommy you are nicer now than before you broke your arm and a leg”
Susan- (aghast) Why
Tess- Because you give me candy and dessert all the time, rather than just after dinner.

Tess- (after spending 2 ½ weeks with family while we were out in Reno) This has been the longest and bestest vacation ever.

Emily- the optimist
--Mommy it is a good thing you only broke 1 arm and leg, instead of both.
--Can I sleep on the couch next to you at night time?

Will—“Did mommy fall off a mountain or a cliff?”

All the kids are amazed at how many friends have brought food and flowers. They said, “we have a lot of friends.” To which I reply, yes, they are the best. We are very lucky.

July 17 Susan Comes Home

Susan is doing well considering everything. She came home last monday, after spending 4 days at Albany Med. Once she learned how to get into a wheelchair and from the chair into the potty, they said she could go home. Now she has to spend the next 10 weeks or so without putting any weight on her right leg, so she gets around in a wheel chair. Fortunately, our back room and bathroom are set up well for that. My insurance also will pay for the physical and occupational therapists to come to the house. The kids are all in camp or daycare at Skidmore, and I can work at home so that I can keep an eye on her. She is more or less self-sufficient around the house, though I need to remember to keep the food and other necessities at an accessible height. We also had some friends come over and build a ramp so that she can get in and out of the house through our back door.

The downside for her now that her physical and living situation is more or less stabilized is trying to deal with the long haul ahead. As you know, she isn’t the most patient person, and the medical prescription is more or less just sit around and wait. She also tires pretty easily, which makes having friends visit or dealing with kids a short lived proposition. She is starting to try to get a handle on having nearly died, which isn't easy. I think she is doing great so far, but I want to try to stay ahead of any problems.

The kids have been doing great. Our friends have been making us lots of dinners and taking the kids which helps. Susan's parents were also living with us until today, which helped immensely. It was nice to be able to be a little lazy about keepng things up, and having Ellen pick up the slack.

July 12 Ramp Raising Party-

A huge thanks to Greg G, Ron Lewis, Taylor Morrison, and Chris Smith for building a wheelchair ramp for Susan and for Jim Martinez for his design assistance in getting the proportions and slope right. David and Cathy Perry provided essential liquid refreshments to keep the project going. Susan periodically wheeled to the doorway to inspect the progress, and made her debut trip up and down it. The ramp is exceptionally well built and wouldn’t budge even with 10 kids skateboarding on it. If it was up to me, I think I would have propped two pieces of plywood on the step and hoped she could make it. I am not sure what is more amazing, that I have friends who are manly enough to actually design and build a ramp or that I have friends who are willing to take 3 hours on a very hot evening to build it. Who needs Complete Home Makeover with friends like this? I am really looking forward to taking Susan for a spin around the block with the kids this evening.

Also, a big thanks to Allerdice, which gave us all the wood and screws either at cost or free. I can’t imagine Home Depot or Lowes doing that. Susan likes to “shop local”, and always bought her paint at Allerdice since they were helpful.

July 11 Welcome Home Susan As many of you have heard, Susan is home now. The original prognosis was for a week at Albany Med and then 2-3 weeks at a residential facility. But she called me on Monday and told me she was busting out of the hospital. I asked her if the doctors knew. Their requirement was that she be able to transfer from the bed to the wheelchair and the wheelchair to the potty using her left foot as a pivot. She figured that out in a day and home she came. Fortunately, our back playroom and bathroom are wheelchair accessible. She has also figured out how to get on the front porch, so she can enjoy the summer and greet her public from the front porch. The nurses and physical therapists will come to our house to do check-ups and therapy.

Calendar for helping hands - instructions for calendar are located at the bottom of the page
7/11/05 - Bob just called me because Susan needs a ramp built A.S.A.P. to be able to get in and out of her house. The requirement to be let out of the hospital was that she had to be able to make from the bed to the commode on her own. She has done this so she ordered Bob to get a ramp built. I asked about rehab. and this will be done at their house which makes things much easier and I'm sure much more pleasant. I asked Bob to have Jim Martinez sketch up a ramp and that I would be willing to put it together. Bob has already asked Ron Lewis to help out with the construction of the ramp also. If we need more hands we will be asking soon.
7/5/05 - letter from Bob
Hi,

It looks like we will be flying home tomorrow, wednesday! Both the trauma and
ortho doctors have signed off on her flying home via air-ambulance tomorrow.
It looks like she will go to an acute care facility at Albany Med for a while
before eventually being transferred to a residential treatment facility where
she can learn how to do "transfers" from the bed to a wheel chair and wheel
chair to the potty. The mid-range prognosis is that Susan will be in a
residential treatment facility for 3-4 weeks before she can go home, and then
will be non-weight bearing for about 2 months after that. The time frame for
her fractures to heal are about 12 weeks for the ankle and pelvis, and 6-8
weeks for the feet, upper and lower jaw, and elbow. It will not be easy, but
we really feel like the worst is behind us now.

She has been sitting in a chair for about 1 1/2 hours a day, her pain is
better, and her spirits are excellent, as they have been the whole time, much
more so than my own at times. In fact, we spent yesterday morning thinking
about funny things to put on the Susan website, including links to imaginary
games for people to play, like can you use the helicopter to rescue Susan
before the Donner party gets her or can you find Dr. Blakey, her ortho
surgeon. Susan's propensity for gallows humor exceeded my own. I knew things
were really good when she told me to go get her make-up and lipstick this
morning.

Her confusion associated with the minor brain bleeding has also diminished
dramatically. It is normal with injuries like this, and was probably why she
thought she was pregnant or that there was a strange conspiracy going on at
the hospital involving cults and body piercing.

The kids are coming home today with the grandparents and will be at Camp
Northwoods and Greenberg on Wednesday.

Please tell everyone the good news and thank everyone for all their support.
I can't even begin to tell you how deeply touching it was to me personally to
know that so many people were concerned about Susan and me.

Bob
7/1/05 - letter from Bob
> Hi Beau,
> I am less frustrated now, although I still haven't heard from the Dr. Susan is still in lots of pain (8 on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst; in comparison on Friday after she fell off the cliff she said it was a 6). My cousin and I are staying by her bedside and hitting the morphine button every 10 minutes as soon as it lets us. Her spirits are incredibly good considering the situation. While we were waiting for Susan to come out of surgery, my cousin and I were trying to name all the state capitals, but gave up after we realized we couldn't even name a city in KY. 2 hours after Susan came out of surgery, we were talking with a nurse who was from Miss. We asked him what the capital of KY was, and Susan croaks, Lexington, and cracks a big grin and goes back to sleep. She is very groggy and keeps thinking she is pregnant and wants to name the boy Cole.
Here is the full medical report.
Susan is in great shape for falling off a cliff. No head, spine, or internal injuries after falling 25 feet off a cliff on Donner Summit near Lake Tahoe. 1 fractured metatarsil in her left foot , -3 fractured metatarsals in her right foot, a type III fractured right tarsus (ankle). They did surgery yesterday and put 3 pretty big screws in that to keep it together. The Dr. said it will be immobilized for 12 weeks, and will be a risk for avascular necrosis down the road. -a transverse fracture of the right olecrenon (elbow). A couple of screws, and it seemed like it should heal very nicely.
pelvis was fractured in 2-3 places, the asetablum (sp?) was separated from the rest of the pelvis. A trauma pelvis specialist put it back together with a couple of screws. was the most serious. This surgery took about 6 hours, and she was cut opened on the front and back for the surgery. Risk of AVN down the road. -a fractured upper and lower right mandible and sinus fracture; no treatment necessary, but no tough steaks either in near future. big scars on right forehead and chin, maybe plastic surgery in the future.
They also put a filter in her vena cava (?) or whatever the name of the major vein that all the blood from the lower part of the body dumps in to prevent any blood clots from going to the heart.
The orthopedic guys her are pretty good b/c Reno is the extreme skiing capital of the US and there are lots of ATVers. The talk about the AVN freaked me out a little bit, especially after waiting 11 1/2 hours after surgery, but the Drs view, correctly, is to think of the recovery process in steps.
Step 1- focus on pain management, recovery from surgery, starting to learn how to do transfers, and trying to get her NY.
Step 2- work on rehab to get her from residential treatment facility in NY to home
Step 3- work on rehap to recover mobility and ability to work
Step 4- deal with long term health consequences.
I am a little overwhelmed by the fall and subsequent treatment and surgery. There is no way I can keep up with all the calls and good wishes, though I am genuinely touched by the outpouring of love and assistance.
Bob
6/30/05 - Susan's surgery took about 10 hours instead of 6, Bob has not spoken to the surgeon yet so we don't know exactly how the rest of the surgery went. Susan vein for the morphine collapsed and was discovered by the second nurse, the is now central line into Susan's neck so she is now in less pain that she was earlier.
6/29/05 - just got off the phone with Jen Sattler who spoke to Bob this evening. At the time Bob called, Susan was 3 hours into her 6 hours of surgery, she's doing fine with the anesthesia, vitals look good. First they looked at her elbow, fixed it up and it seems to be doing well, next was a joint in one of her toes, this was smashed to dust and there's nothing that can be done (she probably will not be able to move this toe anymore). Third was a bone going to the heel, Bob said it looked like 3 large deck screws which were inserted into the foot. They guess it will take about 3 months before they know if this will heal or not. They are worried not enough blood is getting to the injury and the bone could die.
Jen is expecting a call about 1:00 am on 6/30/05 with the next update and will be calling people later that morning.
Bob has asked that everyone does NOT start calling them, Jen Sattler is the point of contact and she has asked several other people to assist with the phone calls.
6/28/05- just got off the phone with Susan, Bob - Susan sounds very drugged up, but is in pretty good spirits. She is having surgery tomorrow 6/29 for everything at once. If all goes well she is expected to be flown back to Albany next week sometime. Susan's mom and dad will be bringing Will, Emily, Tess back to Saratoga from NJ on Tuesday 7/5 so that they can begin there summer camps etc. The children know that mom has a broken leg and arm but nothing else at this point so please be careful what is discussed around them.
If anyone is able to help out with the kids, to give Susan's parents some time to go out and have dinner and/or a drink this would be greatly appreciated.
Below is a link to a Web Base Calendar which anyone can update, this can be use to help us with scheduling of meals for the family, watching the children for an evening, helping with cleaning and laundry etc.
To use the calendar click on the link below, change the month to the month you would like to edit, click on Daily link next to ADD EVENTS on left, click on the day to update, then click on the CREATE link. Enter some text for what you are doing and enter a start and end time (unfortunately these are required fields) and click on submit.