US mum who had leg amputated after tripping over in the garden has taken her first steps

2022-11-18 74

A mum who had her leg amputated after tripping over in the garden while playing with her children has taken her first steps since losing her limb. Deanna Crump, 31, was running around with her children - Isaac, one, and Jerry, three - on August 14th when she tripped and fell - dislocating her right knee. She looked down to see her leg "hanging there" before being rushed to hospital in an ambulance. Doctors discovered Deanna had fractured both bones that connect to her knee, had multiple torn ligaments, damaged arteries, and they were unable to "find a pulse" in her leg and foot. This led to emergency surgery - trying to get the blood flowing back into her leg - where they discovered she also had blood clots. After a week, doctors told her there was nothing more they could do - Deanna then underwent an operation to have her leg amputated below her right knee. Now learning to cope without her limb, Deanna is "living one day at a time" and started physiotherapy at the Henry Ford Rehabilitation Centre, Detroit, Michigan, US, on in October. She is "happy" to be able to be able to walk again and can stroll along a 10ft bar that she walks back on forth on with support. Deanna, a stay-at-home mum, from Down River, Michigan, US, said: "I have now had my cast fitted for a prosthetic leg which is an hour-long process. "They put a cast on your leg and pull it off which is how they start the moulding of it. "After that I got to go and try it on and take a few steps. When I first put it on it was so huge. "When I walked into the room I was so intimidated, seeing this huge prosthetic leg in front of me, it was very intimidating. "Next week I will get to keep the prosthetic leg and take it home." Deanna said she felt like a weight was lifted off her shoulders when she took her first steps. She said: "I cried and the first appointment with my best friend's mum, Kimberley, who was with me. "She has been the one taking me to my appointments and taking my three-year-old to pre-school and she was also tearing up when I took my first steps. "I was going into the appointment a nervous wreck, I was so afraid that I was going to fall. "As soon as I took the first step, it was like a weight was lifted off me. "It's hard but I am getting stronger, I still struggle a lot but eventually I will have to get stronger - I don't want to be in this wheelchair anymore. "I will do whatever I have to do to use the prosthetic all the time to get my life back to normal." Deanna was in surgery for five-and-a-half hours, she then spent six days in ICU and got moved into outer ICU for three days, before leaving Henry Ford Hospital on 30th August. Deanna said: "Honestly, the nurses at the hospital made it better, it was an up and down rollercoaster of emotions. "They wanted me to get up and out of bed and I was there yelling saying I couldn't, but I did it and when I did, I was very happy." While Deanna was in the hospital, a GoFundMe page was set up for her and her family and more than $19k was raised to put towards house renovations and supporting the family while her husband, Jerry, 38, a kindergarten teacher, is off work caring for her. Deanna will soon be required to use a microprocessor knee which costs $50k which she says they "just can't afford". The plan is to set up another fundraising page to help go towards to cost of the knee. She said: "Every day is still super hard, I am still in a wheelchair - it sucks. "My husband is doing OK but as far as the kids, my son will still says to me every day 'Mumma, you got one leg now' and he will ask to touch my stitches and see my leg."

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