If Lorin Milton was ever going to be able to play with, or even hold and carry the daughter he and his wife Tricia were expecting, he had a long road ahead of him.
Not long before he even knew he had a little girl on the way, Sept. 16, 2009, Lorin and Tricia were in the driveway of their Edmonton home, loading up the truck with furniture to donate when he slipped off the tailgate. The fall was just a few feet, but it broke his forearm in three places, dislocated the elbow and tore tendons and ligaments.
He called it a freak accident but one that was expected to forever change his life.
Responding paramedics took him to Sturgeon Community Hospital in St. Albert for his immediate needs, but that facility happens to have an upper limb orthopedic program – they did the surgery to repair Lorin's arm just a couple of days layer.
It was also where his post-op was handled, which involved custom splinting and rehabilitation.
"Despite being a fairly small hospital within the scheme of things in Edmonton and this area, we do some fairly good work in here," said Dr. Joseph Bergman, orthopedic surgeon and chief of surgery. "There are four guys [at Sturgeon Hospital], four surgeons, who are upper extremity fellowship trained."
The result, said Bergman, is an environment where information can be shared freely and a lot of good work can be done in terms of recovering mobility.
In Lorin's case, he was told not to expect too much and that his forearm might never be the same. It is the transition from surgery into a successful rehab program that might make a difference.
"I would say that by and large most of our surgeries are successful [and] the rehab afterwards is successful. One of the factors of course that impacts success is a patient's compliance and dedication," said Treena Hinse rehabilitation services unit manager. "They can't walk away or say 'OK, I've had the surgery. I'm done.' They have to work hard to get there."
For Lorin, that little girl on the way was his motivation.
“I found out that she was pregnant and I was like ‘Oh boy, this isn’t good and I have got to get healthy,’” he said. “I was doing the physio at home … but I was doing them a little bit longer. I fought through a little more pain and stuff like that to try and get this process done so I could at least hold her and carry her around.”
Lorin’s arm is still not 100 per cent — Some spots within his range of motion, which contain metal screws and plates, are still weak. There is still some rehab ahead of him. But he can hold Jillian, who is now five months old.
There will come a day, if Lorin keeps it up, where he will likely have most of his arm’s function back. It is a scenario that is becoming less and less rare, according to Bergman.
“We’re getting better at really restoring people’s function,” he said. “A guy who has a terrible elbow injury, who in the past we would have said ‘You know what, that’s the new you,’ now we can say ‘We can provide you some degrees of function. We can provide you a close to normal life.’”
