Hi everyone
 
The first post-operation reports from Dad himself are that he had a very difficult night after the operation and yesterday he was in excruciating pain, which he described as the worst pain he’s ever experienced.  One can’t help but wonder if he has, in fact, been in comparable agony immediately after the accident but of that, he fortunately has no memory.
 
The bone graft operation which Steve performed entailed taking a 5cm wide piece of bone from Dad’s pelvis, cutting it into strips and inserting it into Dad’s leg, along with a metal plate and 4 screws to provide additional support.  During the accident, Dad lost a significant area of bone from his leg.  It was a compound fracture with many breaks from his shin downwards.  The hospital in Tours had previously told us that this complex break, with missing bone along with many fragmented pieces of bone, was in a particularly tricky location because it was near his ankle, which meant his long term prospects of how this would affect his leg’s stability and balance were questionable.  Dad has fortunately, thankfully, been in superlatively good hands, having Steve as his surgeon, giving him the best opportunity for the best recovery possible. 
 
Dad now, sadly, has to ride out the pain and count the days until the cast comes off, with some very intensive physiotherapy ahead to regain his mobility as quickly as is realistically possible.  He is being encouraged to try to stand and move around his bed a little with the use of a zimmer frame, but he is still extremely weak and his muscles have wasted away so much that this is very hard for him to begin to do.  This is not helped by the fact that he is still struggling to eat anything other than tiny quantities, so he has very limited energy intake at the moment too.
 
No doubt, things will start to improve gradually but in the meantime, Dad has to endure the pain and discomfort from this latest procedure.  The pain he had yesterday has subsided a little today so each new day should see the pain dwindling.
 
We’ll let you know when we have more news.
P.S.  We’ve just heard that Dad won’t be back in the UK for at least 6 weeks.  He will begin his rehabilitation in a specialist centre somewhere Paris in order to allow him to return to the hospital he’s currently in so that they can do post-op check-ups themselves on his leg on two separate occasions, before Dad returns to the UK.  This is disappointing in the sense that Dad will still be so far away, but it’s much better that it is the operating hospital who assesses Dad’s leg’s progress in two and six weeks’ time.
 
 
Love
Nat
xxx