Kimberly: femur, tibial and pelvic fracture testimonial

My name is Kimberly. I’m an equipment installer for Frontier Communications. October 7, 2015, I was riding my bike on a bike trail alongside the highway and a driver ran off the road and hit me. I was ejected 60 feet and I landed in the woodline, 10 feet into the woodline. When the first responders got there, it took them 15 minutes to extricate me. From there they flew me to Tampa General where I was seen by Dr. Mir of Florida Orthopaedic Institute. And I was in and out of consciousness. And the next real lucid moment I had was two days later I woke up. They had done the first surgery on my right femur and my right tibia. And my left leg had a fixator around it. I was diagnosed with a broken pelvis, a broken right femur, a broken right tibia and fibia, a broken left tibial plateau and a broken ankle. It hurt a lot. It was very painful. I could not bear weight for three months. And I stayed in the ICU for 12 days after which they moved me to the rehabilitation section of the hospital where I stayed for another two weeks. And they sent me home by ambulance, had to be transported on my ambulance. And where I was set up with a hospital bed where I would still remain non-weight bearing for another month.

I followed up with Dr. Mir shortly after I got home. He took x-rays. I was healing, you know, progressing. I followed up again 30 days later, same thing, x-rays progressing good. And that, that was the end of the tie for my weight-bearing. He sent me to the Florida Orthopaedic Institutes rehabilitation on Bloomingdale where I had to learn to walk again. Which that right there was the most painful. But it was made easier by the staff. I was there for approximately eight months, so I probably had to, each therapist had a chance to work with me. Not only was it if I had physical disabilities and physical pain, I had a lot of emotional and mental. And they, they worked with me on that, not to the point of feeling pity for me. It was like, okay, well we know it hurts, but you’re going to do it anyway.

I didn’t know whether I’d work again. I had a child to raise. I didn’t know how that was going to turn out. But slowly through the therapy, I was able to get a lot of that back. I’m back to traveling. Going through the airport screening is not a hassle. Like I thought it would be. I’m able to get around and get up the stairs. I live in a two-story home, so I did this. Stairs were a challenge at first, but I can get up, I’m back to work. I’m doing what I was doing. I have to stick with the gym. Just, you know, just to get train, get my strength up and be able to actually get up off of the couch. I can just get up with no hands. Like, am I, when I do it, it’s like, wow, just think a year ago you couldn’t do this and there was no pressure. Like, Oh, by one month you should be running. Or you know, it was just, it was at my case, whatever I was comfortable with. Not getting too comfortable, like, okay, you’ve done this enough. Let’s move on to something a little more challenging. People would ask me, like, my coworkers, can you do this? Why? I don’t know. I’m not going to know it, so I try it, so let’s go try it. You know? So everything’s a challenge now. It’s like, okay, challenge, accepted. The best part is getting my life back, get my life back. Being able to do the activities that I do before, and even some that haven’t thought of, you know, before I didn’t realize that there are people that do what Florida Orthopaedic Institute does. I didn’t mean to put it together, put my body back together. They put me back together. If someone were, you ever were to find yourself in that situation, Florida Orthopaedic Institute, place to be. And Dr. Mir’s the doctor to go to.