RavenFZ6
Junior Member
Holy crap.. He laid down the bike and hit the tow hitch! Man.. thats horrible..
Recovery has been slow, and ive just been doing what I can to stay in shape and healthy. Its just that theres no immediate results with this stuff.
But Im glad it wasnt worse then it was!
Unfortunately the guy in the F150 in my situation had only minimum coverage, which is not even enough to cover half of my $50,000 dollar medical bill..
And getting a lawyer to go after the driver for compensation would more then likely just a waste of more money that I dont have, since this red neck guy was driving around a beat up old 1984 F150, and probably does not have too much to his name. That leaves him more then likely not able to pay too much of any settlement that would be worked out, and it would be just a big waste of time.
And we all know that the lawyer would make sure he got his share of it first. So I'll end up further screwed out of cash as it is.
As of right now, I have to come up with $30,000 to pay for the rest of the cost of my treatment while being out of work for a minimum of 2 months and I was not even at fault at all for the accident. There wont be any money I'd get from his insurance or anything like that for how this will impact me for the rest of my life, how this screws up my plans for the next 2 months and how much of a general pain in the ass this whole thing is because the insurance is already maxed out on the medical bill and the insurance company can not be held responsible to pay for anything over what the other drivers policy covers.
To put icing on the cake,
It looks like the doctor that did the surgery did not do the operation correctly as the screw that he used was too long and is sticking out the other side of my bone about 3/8ths of an inch and is screwing up the muscles back there. This leaves the whole calf really painful to touch or move, and started a day after I left the hospital and only got worse. Unfortunately, I wasnt able to see the xrays until after I was home from the hospital.
That doctors office has done very little to fix the situation other then tell me that they can remove the screw after the bone heals if its still bugging me. The bone is gunna take 2 months to heal and by then, damage to the tissue will already be done.
When I went to see the doctor about it last tuesday, he was on vacation so I met with his assistant, who for the most part was absolutely useless. All she did when I asked her questions about the xrays I saw, was give me the normal run around she always does and pretty much just fed me BS about removing the screw later on and how it shouldnt bother me. She didnt even acknowledge the screw until I had to grab the xray and point out to her that there was simply no bone matter around the end of the screw that was sticking out.
Luckily my uncle owns a machine shop and builds orthopedic and aerospace prototypes. His main customer is Stryker Orthopedics, and produces/develops many of these products and he has a very close relationship with them. He had me send them the xrays and hes having the engineers over there take a look to see how much stuff this doctor did wrong since in many cases these engineers have a better understanding of how these products are supposed to work then the doctors do.
From what I understand so far, the doctor only used that 1 screw to anchor the rod to the bone which is not going to hold the bottom part of the bone to the rod.
He said the doctor was relying on friction to hold the bottom piece on there which is definately not what should be done, there should have been atleast 3 more screws used. There are a few other concerns we have with the length of the rod he used which will possibly give me joint trouble in the future aswell..
I did question the doctor prior to surgery about how everything would be done and what he said he was gunna do was quite different to what was done from what I can see.
I dunno why i got stuck with this doctor but my next appointment is this tuesday.. and I already made sure he would be there. I have a bunch of questions that I will be asking him and if I get another stupid response Ill be sure to take him to court about this.
Im not gunna let him do a half ass job on my leg and then get stuck losing my ass to pay for the huge bill that was run up by it.
So we'll see how it plays out. Ill need to get a second opinion from another surgeon and all of that, but i think its great to have the engineers at Stryker take a close look at this aswell. More ammo for this fight cant hurt..
Below I have some other xrays I had the doctors office take last tuesday when I went to ask about the screw and the pain in my calf. They said they are unable to send me a digital copy of the xrays and could only give me a copy printed on paper, which I thought was ridiculous.. So i had to scan these.. hence the quality.
They took the xrays at a weird angle and they dont show the screw coming out as much as it really is, and the reason for that is because the bone is triangle shaped. They put the screw in from the top on an angle and its coming out of the other side of the tirangular bone on an angle. Since you cant see that angle of the bone, it just looks like its sticking out just a little ways, when its really sticking out of the bottom a decent ammount.
Another view of the rod.
Not exactly how I wanted to spend my time as a newly aged 21 year old, but I'll get through it.
Thanks again for the support and I'll be sure to answer any questions you guys have.
Later on!
- Sorry if a lot of this message is difficult to understand. They have me on a fair ammount of pain medication..
