Please help Mike on his road to recovery

For those of you who don’t know Michael Walton, he is a 22 year old from England, who came to Canada last summer to play for Beaconsfield Rugby. He came back this summer on a working Visa, to play rugby and work full time. He lives in Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue with two other friends from his rugby club. Mike is also currently finishing his Masters in Sports Psychology at Northumbria University in Newcastle, while here for the summer. His dream was to pursue rugby professionally and become a teacher, where he would also teach the sport. He is a hardworking young man, who gives all his love to his friends and family.

On Sunday August 4th, I got a call at 11:26AM from my Mike saying the quad bike had flipped (rolled over) and fell on his hand while on a trail near my cottage in Saint-Donat de Montcalm. Little did I know, this was the start of a very hard and life-changing journey for Michael. Luckily, he was with his friend who was able to flip it back and drive him straight to the nearest CLSC.

He was immediately sent by ambulance to the Saint-Agathe Hospital, as he needed to be seen straight away. I got into my car and drove to the hospital to meet him. He spent the entire day and the evening at this hospital.  He was then transferred to the Saint-Jérome Hospital (Clinique externe) early Monday morning. There, he met with Dr. Badran, a reconstructive surgeon. An emergency surgery was going to take place the following morning, as he broke multiple bones in his hand and wrist, and ruined the skin on his entire palm. His injury was classified as "severe crush trauma" to right hand.

We brought Mike back home after multiple tests and X rays, put him on the pain medication he was prescribed and fought through a very long and painful night. As the morning slowly came, we brought him back to St-Jerome Hospital at 10:30 for his surgery. He successfully came out to the day-surgery recovery area at 3:00PM. Although his surgery went well, Mike was still in a lot of pain. We were really looking forward to bringing him home that same day, however he was not stable enough to be brought home. He was kept at the hospital one more night to try to manage his pain, which he described as a 9/10 - 80% of the time.

If you’ve travelled before, you know that you often need to get travel insurance. Mike had full medical travel insurance for his trip to Canada. Unfortunately, according to his insurance company,  there was an exemption in his policy and it did not cover accidents with this type of recreational vehicle. He was unaware of this exemption until after the fact. He needed the medical attention as soon as possible, so there was no question about getting him into surgery. You can imagine that seeing a loved one in so much pain is extremely difficult and I wanted nothing but the best for him.

Mike has a very long road to recovery. Until now, his Canadian medical bills have added up to approximately $14000. This amount has covered his St Jerome surgery, and his emergency visits with Sainte Agathe and Lakeshore hospitals. We were advised by Canadian medical professionals on Saturday August 10th that the best course of action would be to return to the UK for followup medical care to keep the costs from rising rapidly. So yesterday, on Sunday August 11h, Mike and I flew back to England, where he will most likely receive additional reconstructive and skin grafting surgeries in the coming weeks. His bandages need to be changed daily or almost ever other day. 

Now that he has have returned to the UK the additional surgeries will be covered by the UK Medical system. However, according to the doctors, once Mike's hand has healed from the surgeries, he will face 12 to 24 months of extensive physical rehabilitation. Based on the trauma of the accident, counselling may also be a huge benefit for Mike. Rehabilitation and physical therapy in the UK can still be very expensive and given the seriousness of his hand injury - we expect this to be costly undertaking.

Our biggest hope for Mike is that he gets the needed treatment and gains full function of his hand, in order to return to his funny and loving self as soon as possible, whether that be here or back home in England.

In such short amounts of time, Mike has brought so many people together. Not only does he have a great team of doctors and nurses, he has a whole family that is ready to fight his fight.

We are still so grateful of his good health knowing that the accident could have been much worse. Mike has a very long road of rehabilitation ahead of him but I am very confident that he will fight strong and turn this challenge into a moment of personal growth. We are asking our family, our friends, our teammates, our coaches, our teachers and anyone who may of heard me speak so highly of Mike, to please donate and help us reach our goal.

He, and the rest of his family, are so appreciate of all the support and donations.

Lauren