How To Effectively Cripple Oneself

(Caution:  Knarly photo below)

Long story short,  on Oct. 7th, 2004, while helping to clean up my buddy Skippy's metal shop (wanted to make it safe so we could build bike frames), I tripped and fell, my leg catching near the top of a 4' high piece of expanded metal, and as I fell the "cut edge" aided by my body weight instantly severed my left Achilles tendon about 4" above the ankle and as I continued to fall, pretty much shredded my skin and the underlying tissue. 

Click Here for Skippy's Reaction

It may sound bad but it was much, much worse.  We wrapped it with a greasy shirt and I managed not to bleed to death, and then got to spend 10 weeks in the hospital (a whole, Whole, WHOLE 'nother story).  The docs saved my leg, and after all the surgeries and skin grafts, I got out 4 days before Christmas, still with an open wound, and had hopefully my last skin graft July 12th, 2005.

Here's the leg 3 days after surgery, on Oct. 16th, 2004.  The white looking part is the tendon, the green things are sutures, and the meaty looking stuff is...meat.  The upper stitched area is from where they had to fish the tendon out of my calf, then butt it up to the lower half, and sew & go.

Here's how it looked in early May 2005, before my last skin graft.  The open area is all that's left after all the tissue granulated in over the tendon, and the skin from the first graft had closed all it felt like closing.  Basically I had an open wound for 6 months.  Thank the Lord for a sturdy immune system.

Here's the shot from Friday July 29th, 2005, with the last skin graft really starting to take.  I still have tons of adhesions binding the tendon down (from when the new tissue grew back around and on the tendon), and for it to work normally again, I'll probably need a little tendon reconstruction to clean it up in there.