A Story About a Leg

No, this isn’t a children’s book tale involving some unfortunate ogre who gets his leg caught in a hole and has to work out how he’s going to escape it. This story involves a real-life ogre (i.e. me…) who has a terrible accident and learns that simple actions can have really terrible and far-reaching consequences.

Van Halen were wrong

It’s the 4th of May 2025. Star Wars day. Also, my brother Ryan’s birthday. The sun is shining in my part of Ireland and my fiancée Debbie and I are standing in a field with unusually shaped metallic objects called baskets scattered around us. We’re playing disc golf, our favourite pastime.

There’s a basket I’m aiming for about 250 feet/75 metres away. I have a bag full of discs and I’m sending throw after throw at the basket until the bag is empty and I have to retrieve the discs. A couple of throws go a lot further than the basket. So far, in fact, that they clear a line of tall bushes 50 feet behind it and a fence beyond them that marks the edge of the property we’re on.

With my bag empty, we head over to start collecting the discs and I make for the fence to retrieve the ones that went over it. It’s late Spring now, and the nettles are out. There aren’t many on my side of the fence, but they’re right up against it on the other side. So, I climb to the top of the fence (about 5 feet off the ground), and jump out and over the nettles.

I hear a loud snap.

I look down, thinking I’ve landed on a twig. It’s not a twig. It’s my right leg. The foot is shooting off at an unnatural angle from just above the ankle. I scream to Debbie that I’ve broken my leg as I crumple to the ground. But she already knows. She heard it snap too.

I know, that Fibula break looks nasty, doesn’t it? Turns out that was the least of my concern. Where the Tibia meets the ankle was were I did the real damage. It shattered.

Hospital daze

The next few days are a blur of excruciating pain and drugs I never want to need to take again. I get a green whistle (methoxyflurane) when I reach the hospital and ketamine later that day as they try to realign my ankle. Ketamine causes temporary detachment from reality. I can vouch for that. For a while there I truly feel like I have stepped outside of the universe and can see it for what it truly is – just a collection of small black-and-white cubes with curved sides. It’s an awful, awful place to go.

I have an operation the next day where temporary pins are drilled through bones to stop them from moving.

A week later, another operation and even more holes are drilled into me.

This is called an External Fixation (Ex-Fix for short). It is used to lock in bones while they heal, with the promise that the wearer will be able to put weight on the foot sooner than other methods. While that turns out to be true, I still have this thing attached to me for the next 134 days. 134 days of trying to sleep with it on. 134 days of showering on a chair with this thing hanging outside of the cubicle. 134 days of the scars around each pin healing and then re-opening again as my leg swells and recedes. 134 days of the psychological trauma of looking down and seeing this thing every time.

It was a dark time.

I try to be a jovial sort of chap. I’m definitely more keen to smile than sneer, anyway. But this injury sent me to depths of despair and depression I didn’t even think I had in me. The memory of the moment it all happened would regularly smash into my consciousness with such power that I would find myself yelling out in pain all of a sudden, and very often. In my sheltered little life, I would never have thought I’d have to cope with PTSD like this.

Hobbling toward the light

But then, step by step, things started getting better. I went from relying on two crutches to move anywhere at all for months, then down to a single crutch and the ability to actually hold objects while I walked! Then, I risked a few tentative steps with no crutch at all. That hurt. It took another week before I even thought of doing that again. A week after that, the crutch turned into a walking stick and my solo steps were becoming more frequent.

Finally, one day, I could walk again without the need of any assistive apparatus. Well, I say ‘walk,’ but it was probably closer to limp, or stumble. In fact, we started referring to me as the Hobblin’ Goblin. And yes, I do think it would make for a funny picture book…

Seven months on from the accident, I finally felt confident enough to return to working at the bookstore. I booked an appointment with the company’s HR rep and we walked around the store and discussed duties and my ability to do them. I failed the test. In hindsight, rightly so. I wasn’t ready yet. But it stung all the same.

The problem was, the leg and ankle had healed well, just not in the right position. I was told I would need another operation. So, I went on a waiting list to get my leg fixed once more. And the waiting began. It was a long enough wait. In the meantime, I worked on strengthening my leg and ankle as much as I could. The driveway where we live is about 30 metres long from one end to the other. I started walking laps of it. Lots and lots of laps of it.

At first, I could do about 2 kilometres (34 laps, for those keeping count) a day to start with. Then 3. Then 4. I ended up being able to clock in 5 kilometres a day on that driveway. All in the hope that the work done before the next operation would hold me in better stead on the other side of it.

It did.

Breaking a broken leg

On the 29th of April 2026, 361 days after breaking my leg, I broke my leg again. Well, qualified professionals broke my leg again. My third surgery in a year, my second stay in a hospital and yet another cast on my leg. But this time, I was prepared for it. I knew what to expect and the things I could and couldn’t do. For six weeks I was back on crutches and my leg hanging out of the shower.

This time around, the depression I felt in the first six months of the accident left me be. Thank goodness. In its place was a firm resolve that once that cast was off, I would be pushing hard to recover and finally move on from this terrible ordeal. Because that’s what it has been: a terrible ordeal. The often crippling feeling of hopelessness. The fear for the future and just how far I can realistically recover. Worry about complications such as arthritis setting in later on down the road. Money. Plans. All because I jumped over a fence and landed badly. A split-second decision that will have repercussions for the rest of not only my life, but my fiancée’s life too. One silly decision. One second in time.

Finding Small Wins in a Big Loss

We had plans. We were going to get married last year. Then we were going to get married this year when that didn’t work out. We were going to move to Australia this year. We were going to play disc golf tournaments. We were going to see more of Ireland before we left its shores. All gone. As I sit here writing these words on the 4th of July 2026, I still can’t walk very well.

The final cast came off four weeks ago and I can only now just about walk 2km on that driveway over the span of multiple sessions throughout the day. My back hurts when I walk. My other leg does too. I’ve got a long way to go still before I can do a full day’s work. In the meantime, every week that I’m not working is money that could have been put towards flights, wedding plans, a container to move our possessions, rent.

But guess what, I’m not going to complain. I’m alive, my leg is getting better every day and I have so much to look forward to that it would be very wrong of me to feel anything other than thankful for what I have. Nobody’s life is perfect, but it’s what we do with what we have that defines our lives. I’m determined to make the best life I can for my fiancée and me.

One hobbling step at a time.