Rut Carpintero: Adapting to Life with Amputations – Challenges, Triumphs, and Advocacy

2024-04-06 08:38:15
Rut Carpintero, who suffered the amputation of all four limbs in 2023, uses large tweezers to dress herself. (On loan to Infobae)

Gestures as everyday as answering the phone or getting dressed have become a world to Rut Carpintero. He now takes much longer to answer a call and needs large clamps to be able to put on a bra or a skirt, to be able to adapt, in short, to his new life. A few months ago, this 43-year-old Valladolid woman suffered the amputation of all four of her limbs. She still finds it hard to believe how the supposed pharyngitis that had left her in bed for three days was actually bilateral pneumonia that led to septic shock and ischemia, so due to gangrene her arms had to be amputated at the level of the forearms. , the left leg at the level of the femur and the right by the tibia.

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Rut had gone to her family doctor for a sore throat: she had no voice, and not seeing anything strange, the doctor simply prescribed paracetamol. After three days, she started vomiting a lot and called an ambulance. At the hospital she began to breathe with difficulty and, when performing a test, the doctors found that she had bilateral pneumonia of unknown origin. From there she was admitted to the ICU and she no longer remembers her. “They put me on a ventilator and induced a coma. Ten days later I woke up, but I had septic shock, which implies the failure of several organs, and I even spent a month and a half receiving dialysis because my kidneys did not work. My limbs began to have a strange, dark color, and I couldn’t move them, although at first I didn’t realize it because the only thing that mattered to me was that I was alive,” she says in conversation with Infobae Spain.

Rut remembers that she cried a lot when the doctor told her that several of her fingers and toes had to be amputated. However, shortly after, the news was much worse: his limbs had to be amputated if he wanted to survive. He had entered the Valladolid Clinic in April and in July his life changed forever. “It is now when I am beginning to fit everything in, when I recognize myself again, and say, well, I am still me, because despite the tremendous changes, the essential remains. I have been through a terrible situation and fortunately I am alive,” he says with fortitude on the other end of the phone.

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In fact, it is now that “she begins to look calmer”, because she can finally enjoy “what she has at the moment”, although she also admits that living with pain “is very hard” and there are many days in which who can barely sleep. Rut continues to feel the so-called phantom limb pain that occurs in her limbs when they have been amputated, but she is confident that it will diminish over time. That is why she also highlights the importance of psychotherapy, because amputations not only have a significant impact on a physical level, but also on an emotional, family and social level.

Rut Carpintero, 43, had all four limbs amputated in 2023.

Rut was discharged last September and was clear that her recovery was going to be complicated. What I did not imagine was that one of the biggest obstacles would be due to the lack of physiotherapists and occupational therapists with specific knowledge about amputations and prostheses of upper and lower limbs, since this type of professionals does not exist “in any public hospital in Castilla y León ”. “They do not prepare them for the use of prostheses nor do they teach them how to use them,” which is a paradox, he explains, because although he has some of the most advanced prostheses, no one in public health has taught him how to use them properly. “The physical therapy I receive is only limited to treatment, which is very limited.”

In addition, he has had to pay the almost 100,000 euros that the prostheses cost out of his own pocket, because although public health finances them, sometimes the patient has to pay 100% of the cost of the product in the orthopedics and then to recover it he must Contact the Administration of your autonomous community. Rut’s case is more complicated because she could not find the prostheses in any orthopedics in Castilla y León and had to purchase them in one in Madrid whose product catalog was broader. Luckily she was able to draw on savings thanks to the work she has done for years as a high school teacher, but equally, the amount of money she has had to advance is very high and she has to face many other expenses to adapt to her new life, so “The disbursement of money is constant.”

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As if that were not enough, of the two public hospitals in Valladolid, the Clínico Universitario and the Río Hortega, only in the latter has the physiotherapy team received training from a specialist in amputations and prostheses, but Rut has not. That center corresponds to the area in which you live. Incredible as it may seem, bureaucracy prevents this change. “Although the physiotherapists at the Río Hortega Hospital have some training in this area, they cannot refer me to that center and I am still at the University Clinic, where they have not worked with prostheses like mine and I don’t even have occupational therapy,” he laments.

Rut, in the physiotherapy clinic. (On loan to Infobae)

At the moment, Rut goes to a physical therapy clinic in Madrid specialized in amputations and prostheses, an expense to which she must add gasoline, in addition to the time she spends. Furthermore, every time she moves with her partner to the capital, she has to leave her two youngest daughters with relatives.

For all these reasons, Rut demands that hospitals in Spain, including provincial ones, have physiotherapists and occupational therapists with specific training to treat patients with amputations and upper and lower limb prostheses, a request that she has also launched on the Change platform. org, where it has already obtained almost 60,000 signatures.

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), around 4,000 major amputations are performed each year due to peripheral vascular diseases alone, a figure that does not include those caused by accidents or diseases such as cancer.

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