After a night out drinking with friends, Canadian Julia Anderson, 36, came home and slept in an awkward position with her legs tucked under her. When she woke up, she was in a lot of pain and realized that she mightn’t walk: her limbs had swollen to twice their normal size.
“Imagine that your legs are numb, but it was that tingling multiplied by a thousand, it felt like an electric shock going through”, he recalls, in an interview with the Kennedy News and Media website.
Julia says she thought she had broken her leg during the night. She was taken to the hospital by ambulance, and following several X-rays, doctors discovered that the overnight position impeded the flow of blood, creating a condition called compartment syndrome.
The problem causes nerve and muscle ischemia, which spend a long time without receiving oxygen and nutrients and begin to die. When blood returns to the tissues, the damaged cells become severely inflamed.
emergency surgery
Doctors at the Michael Garron hospital in Canada had to open the patient’s leg to relieve pressure, and parts of the muscle were removed to reduce swelling and the amount of toxins that were being released into the bloodstream.
Julia was left with a hole in her leg, and a skin graft was needed to close the injury. “The nerve damage was so severe that I would wake up at dawn screaming in pain,” she recalls. She spent five weeks in hospital, three more at home in bed, and took strong pain medication for a year.
The case happened a few years ago, and even today the Canadian woman cannot walk properly – she still feels her foot tingling frequently.
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