Help Lily: Two Feet are Better Than One

THIS IS VERY LONG** Ultimately, I have to go through many surgeries to save my leg. Below is the rundown of how this all happened and why I am doing a go fund.

July 12th 2021 - On a cross-country road trip from California. Had a motorcycle accident while visiting Indiana - Broken my Tibia and Fibula and part of my ankle. Emergency surgery, hardware added. I was told I could start walking in about 2-3 months and begin physical therapy sooner.

From July to October, I had been to the ER a total of 10 times, both where I had my surgery in Kentucky and in Indiana, where the accident happened and I practically live. My surgical wounds opened up at one point and started sinking, blood everywhere, and the sutures separated. When I went to the ER, I was left for 5 hours with the bandages undone, bleeding on a chair they propped my leg on. When they returned, I was told to come back in a week after my follow-up appointment. They were hematomas; they were a sign that an infection was happening somewhere, and I should have been treated sooner. I was never put on antibiotics after the surgery; my pills were never sent multiple times, and some I never got. In October for the follow-up, I was told that because of bacteria on the hardware, I now have Osteomyelitis, essentially a staph infection inside my bones. The hardware is removed Im put on IV antibiotics that I have to inject three times a day into a line that goes right near my heart. After six weeks, my antibiotics stop showing up, and 2 weeks later, the hospital says, "You still have the IV line in you; no one has taken it out?". This is what I dealt with practically the entire time, complete and utter negligence from the UOFL in Kentucky.

3 Months later, the cast came off and I could walk slightly; over the next 6 months, i go through phases of having recurring bone infections that swelled my leg up to the size of a football and cant walk again. 3 times to be exact, every time they did the same thing take an exray, give me antibiotics, forget to send stuff to the pharmacy, and never send stuff at all. I am in extreme pain, often walking only enough to get to the next seat. The pain has never ended, and I constantly told them over and over again something was wrong.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, my foot swells up again, I can't even touch my skin up to my waste without almost puking from the pain. A new surgical team in Richmond Virginia does MRIs, and I find out this. The bone infections that the previous hospital gave me last year when I had my motorcycle accident (16 months ago) ate through my ankle, ultimately killing my bone. To avoid amputation, I have to go through a series of surgeries that involve breaking my bones to grow more bone and fusing bones to other bones, the most recent being a 3-inch cut clearing all of my bone that had died. Essentially my leg is amputated from the foot and held in place by a cage called an Iliserov device. The plan is to completely fuse my foot to my leg at a ninety-degree ankle, so I will not have an ankle anymore. I won’t be able to run, climb, skateboard etc, but it will allow me to walk and not be in extreme pain from an intense infection. I am now looking at eight months - 1 year of surgeries and recovery if I’m lucky because my only other option is amputation. If there was ever a time in my life to start manifesting, now is it. I don't doubt that I will be able to walk again, but this will be a lengthy process at the tail end of 16 months, one that should of and could have been handled in 4 months. My current doctors have all openly said that there was immense negligence from my previous doctors in Kentucky; however, because the statute of limitations is a year and the way the previous doctors did things, it is almost impossible to sue them for Malpractice. I have talked to many lawyers who all agree this is something that could have been completely avoided. These last 16 months have zapped me financially, and while luckily I have amazing people in my life that have given me places to lay my head to get through this, I have no way to pay for anything else. While Im not worried about my actual bills from the hospital, there are also medical-related things that I need money for on top of all my other bills. Thank you so much to all of you who will or have donated. I'm looking forward to laughing about all this one day, with two legs...