apologies if this comment is unwanted, but i want to stress just how debilitating this injury and the subsequent (necessary) surgery is for her. she will be affected by it her entire life. from this point forward, her body is irretrievably changed.
i say this because i had almost the exact same operation as her in almost the exact same spot. mine was a birth defect that caused my spine to not form correctly and one of my vertebra to be disconnected from the rest of my spine. it was a little less severe than hers, mostly because my break was in 1 central spot and she broke her spine in multiple places.
the way the fusion surgery works is the surgeon essentially builds a new metal bone around the injured one, and the hope is that the body accepts it and reinforces itself around the metal. they cut you all the way open for this--and by that i mean that they actually cut you open both back and front so they have the best reach and chances of getting the metal bone into the right place.
the surgery is intense. mine took 4.5 hours. they cut through my nerves. i woke up without being able to feel my legs. i had to be retaught, basically from scratch, how to walk. the tweet she wrote about sitting up is not an exaggeration. that was my first PT lesson and i would rather sit naked on hot coals than go through that ever again. my doctors had me laying on a tarp in my hospital bed because i was unable to move myself even an inch.
they had to teach me how to go to the bathroom. they had to teach me to walk. i had to relearn how to get out of bed without messing with my back. it took me 3 months to be able to go up a single stair. the pain is unbearable. the disconnect between your brain (who knows how to walk) and the rest of your body (who does not know how to walk) is completely disconcerting. it's horrible.
she has hardware in her spine now, just like i do. my body does not move in the way it used to. it can't. i tried to go to a yoga class a few months ago and there were a lot of poses that i literally could not do, that i used to be able to do, because my body is no longer able to bend that way. people with a lot of fusions have trouble bending at all, even after years.
sometimes, the hardware doesn't even take. i was warned about this and was lucky that my body accepted the foreign bone without trouble. there's also a very high risk of infection around the surgical site. i was on bed rest for months because moving a lot would increase the infection risk.
i did PT 5 days a week for months. i walked with a walker for a year, and a cane for another year. i can't stand for longer than 30 minutes at a time.
having an injury--and a surgery--like this changes your body forever. i am legally disabled because of this and will be for the rest of my life. so will she.
i just want to stress here that she didn't do anything wrong. twitchcon had that pit to jump into. that was its entire purpose. they had a responsibility to keep the people they put into the pit safe and did not meet even the most basic of safety standards. a waiver does not absolve responsibility for such gross, horrific negligence, especially when it caused an injury that will change the course of this entire person's life.
maybe i'm rambling but as someone who's been in the same position as her in recovery right now, i'm so pissed off for her. she deserved so much better, and since she didn't get that, then i think she deserves to sue them for millions and millions of dollars in damages.
2087
kaledo-art
blakekathryn
dededos
pixelskylines
annaxmalina
kianamaiart
snowghoul
vaporwave
izzy806
discoholicmusic
