Paresthesia, a temporary nerve compression accompanied by numbness or tingling in a person’s extremities, is colloquially known as “your foot falling asleep.”
The condition has led to a year of hell for Iolan Susie Jackman.
And now, with a shattered leg that won’t heal properly, she’s faced with a dilemma.
With her savings drained, Jackman faces costly expenditures to pay for a pair of surgeries in the coming months in Minnesota.
“If that doesn’t happen, I’ll probably lose my leg,” she said.
JACKMAN, 78, was sitting at home last July 31 when she realized her foot had fallen asleep.
“Instead of just shaking it around, I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just stand up and stomp it a few times,” Jackman said this week.
“But as I stood up, I went back down.”
Jackman crashed to the floor, with enough force that she apparently fainted.
When she awoke, she saw her right leg bent awkwardly. “It wasn’t pointed the way it was supposed to be,” she said.
In an attempt to move the leg, she realized she couldn’t.
At all.
She called a sister, who she estimated took 10 minutes to arrive from Elsmore. Her sister quickly deduced an ambulance was necessary.
Jackman was transported to Allen County Regional Hospital, where X rays confirmed Jackman had shattered two bones, just below her knee.
She was transported via ambulance to a Saint Luke’s hospital in downtown Kansas City, where she had to wait a few days — first because of a security issue near the hospital, and then to let swelling in her leg subside — before surgeons rebuilt her shattered bones.
Jackman said the surgeon described it like assembling a puzzle.
“First you have to take those pieces apart, and then put them back together.”
Plates on either side of her leg were attached with screws.
