7 YEARS AGO

Tomorrow will be the one year anniversary when my life changed in ways I thought would never happen to me.

19th June 2013 10:22pm, I got up to go for a pee,
I was holding onto my walking frame as I already had problems with my legs due to my lymphedema and they were both bandaged up.
I got to the doorway of the kitchen to enter the corridor when my left leg stopped working and I could not hold myself up properly, Candy was in front of me and tried to hold me up but I told her to let go as I knew I was about to fall and I did not want to take her down with me, and then…WHAAAAM! I was on the floor with Candy anyway.
I was in quite a bit of pain because my knee was hurting, and then Candy asked how my ankle was feeling and I replied back with a why? And she revealed to me that my right foot was now facing backwards! I had dislocated it.
She tried to help me onto the bed but she could not so she phoned for the fire brigade to come round and lift me up onto the bed, as the ambulance service refused to come round to just lift me up as they only deal with medical emergencies.
We could not get a GP out to see me until the next morning so we both tried to get some sleep despite the pain I was in, now I am very good at suppressing my pain as I do have a good threshold but it still bloody hurt!
The next day at around 5pm (as no one could be bothered to come out until then) a GP came over and took off some of the bandaging on my right foot and discovered a great big gaping hole in my ankle with the white bone peeking through and saying Hello! At this point I kinda panicked and Candy apologised and told me that I’ve got to go to hospital.
The first two weeks I was in hospital, I had no medical dressings as the nurses were told not to touch me as the wound care nurse was on holiday and she was the only one in the big hospital who deals with such stuff.
I had my right leg amputated on the 4th July and my left leg on the 20th August.
As why I had my legs amputated above knee was because they left my right leg untreated for two weeks and my left leg only had an ulcer on the bottom of my left foot which was not treated either despite our nagging to the nurses who did fuck all.
I have even been told that I would never get false legs because of the bilateral above knee operations. Which is bollocks as plenty of ex-armed forces soldiers have such legs and get to lead ‘normal lives’ which I can’t.
I just want a chance to walk again, to wander through woods, to go into underground caves and tunnels doing my ghost hunting, to climb stairs, go into shops that I can’t get into because of my wheelchair.