:shock: Interesting read. Everytime I come back from the West Texas Trans Pecos Big Bend Region I always have to pull out a few cactus needles here and there from inadvertant contact (sounds like a football penalty - 15 yards and first down). And you thought that lions and tigers and bears and maurdering bandidos were your main worries!
http://www.thenewsdispatch.com/articles/2007/01/14/news/n1.txtCrutches can't hold him back
By Rick A. Richards, The News-Dispatch
Ed Bohle Jr. had a pretty good hunt in November. During a special deer hunt at Indiana Dunes State Park in November, he got three deer. Not bad for a guy who just a month earlier lost his left leg below the knee.
“There wasn't any doubt I was going hunting,” said Bohle. After a day spent sitting on a picnic table where he'd been placed in the “disabled hunter” area because of his leg, Bohle decided to head back to the woods. So off he went - on crutches - to bag his deer.
“It was tough,” said Bohle. “My crutches kept sinking into the ground and I got all tangled up in weeds.”
But he got his deer, and with help from some friends, was able to haul it out.
Now 57, the avid outdoorsman, former Michigan City police officer, scout leader and contractor wasn't going let something like the loss of a leg slow him down.
Bohle's attitude, said Frank Daniels, a certified prosthetist/orthotist at Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics, 1200 S. Woodland Ave., is amazing. “The better the attitude, the better the recovery for people who've lost a limb.”
For the past 25 years, Bohle has made regular trips to the Big Bend area of the Rio Grande in Texas. Since his first trip there, Bohle fell in love with the area. He takes area scouts there in the spring and returns on his own or with his brother, Jim, a couple other times a year.
He and Jim are regulars at Terlingua Ranch, a tiny town of about 150 people that balloons to 30,000 during its annual chili cook-off, where he and Jim are judges.
Last April 2, during spring break, he took members of Sea Scout Troop 101 and Boy Scout Troop 201 on a 10-day camping trip. They visited caves, went hiking and enjoyed the desert scenery. It was on one of those hikes where a minor injury led to the loss of Bohle's leg.
As he hiked up a 30 percent grade on a mountain, his foot brushed a cactus and a needle from the plant penetrated his hiking boot and embedded itself in his big toe. Bohle didn't feel it. “If you've ever cut yourself with a razor, you don't feel it at first. I kept hiking. It felt like a blister and that's what I though it was.”
The wound even looked like a blister. He treated it with over-the-counter antibiotics and when he got back to Michigan City and the wound hadn't healed, he had a doctor look at it. Even with an X-ray, the needle remained hidden because it was right next to the bone. Early in May, Bohle realized what the problem was when the needle worked its way out of his toe, but by that time, a raging infection had set in and spread. The infection couldn't be stopped and on Oct. 21, Bohle's left leg was amputated just below the knee.
“It was a shock to the system,” said Bohle. “Everybody told me to take it easy, that I wasn't going to be able to do what I used to. So I did.”
And he was miserable. A friend he had known for years told him what to expect. That friend was an amputee and Bohle didn't know it. “I had no idea. He gave me the rundown,” said Bohle.
The owner of E.R. Bohle & Associates, a property management and contracting company, Bohle canceled contracts. But within a short time, he was back on the job, although he couldn't do a lot of the hands-on stuff he once did.
In the meantime Bohle started a series of appointments with Hanger, where he was fitted for an artificial leg. On Tuesday, he had his final fitting, where Daniels trimmed and shaped a plastic casting of Bohle's stump.
Daniels paid close attention to the bottom of Bohle's leg to make sure the swelling had gone down, and while he expects more shrinkage in Bohle's stump, he said he was pleased with the healing.
“We want to know if he will be able to tolerate the pressure of the fit,” said Daniels. “We want to know if he can tolerate the weight that will be on his leg. We want to find out if he will be able to balance himself and go up and down steps.”
As Daniels measured and adjusted the casting, he seemed pleased with the results.
Bohle, too, was pleased and left a pair of shoes at Hanger. Inside the left one will be placed an artificial foot that will be screwed onto the bottom of his prosthetic leg.
“I want to get rid of these crutches,” he said.
On Tuesday, Bohle will get his leg. And on Wednesday, he's headed back to Big Bend with no worries about picking up a cactus needle.
