Carol Murray

The first external fixator didn't work, and then they didn't know what they were going to do, but I was lucky enough that there was a fellow there from a children's hospital, and they were using a different external fixator that was more solid and supportive, so I used that one, and it worked.

So my accident was in September, and the external fixator came off in June.

No.

So I did find a video that shows it that I share sometimes.

But the best way I can describe it is, you know, when someone breaks their bone, they set it and then it fills in.

So it's like one cell or.

microbe or whatever one like little cell at a time it fills in dot dot dot dot dot until the bone is re-healed so it's basically based on that so at the top what they did was they took like about an inch of the bone at the top of the femur and they broke it the good stuff and then that like one inch length piece of bone was connected to a pin and I would use a wrench and four times a day I would

turnip quarter of a millimeter so that every day the bone was moving down and stretching down kind of a millimeter a day.

And dot, dot, dot, dot, new bone would grow behind it.

That had to have been painful.

It was so painful.

Like going through, slicing through my skin to my body, it would be very painful.

And I have the scars to prove it, which is fine.

My scars are my honor badges.

I don't, not me, there are so many and huge ones, but I love them.

Yeah, yeah, my tattoos of valor.

My big one is like fading over the years, although it's still quite prominent, but I'd be fine to have the original.

It is a long time.

And what happened by about February or March-ish, I was experiencing, I was in the rehab by then, almost ready to go home, like the physical rehab.

And so I had to be brought into the hospital.