A 28-year-old personal trainer from Guildford, Surrey, named Angel Willows, almost lost her foot when it was impaled by a metal moped side stand in a crash while riding a moped around Bali. The woman was wearing flipflops when the accident happened, and it left her bone exposed. Angel was in Indonesia with her cousin when they crashed the moped after hitting a pothole.
The Accident
After the pair hit the concrete road, Angel had the combined weight of the scooter and her cousin on top of her. But the worst part was that the metal bike had pierced through her left foot, leaving the bone exposed.
They rushed to the hospital immediately, but apparently, Angel’s cousin, who is a nurse, had to tell hospital staff to wash the wound before they could stitch it up.
After they had stitched her up, Angel noticed that they hadn’t stitched the wound properly, and she was still bleeding heavily. The wound was also turning yellow. Her cousin then suggested that she visit a doctor in Australia after a chemist redressed the wound.
Three days after the incident, they landed in Sydney, Australia, and rushed to a hospital. Doctors told Angel that her foot was badly infected and that she could have lost it due to bad stitching. She had to undergo three wash-out surgeries to clean the wound while doctors checked to see if it was healing.
It Got Worse
But as the days passed, the injury only got worse. Angel’s skin turned black and yellow, which meant that she had to undergo more surgeries. Doctors had to remove the dying skin from her foot and replace it with skin tissue from her groin in a skin flap surgery. She was in the hospital for an entire month before being discharged. She is currently recovering in Australia and vows to wear closed shoes on bikes from now on.
Speaking about the incident, she said, “To be honest, I didn’t realize how bad it was until I got to Australia. I just thought I’d be in and out with more stitches but it was much worse than I originally thought. It was scary when they said I could have lost my foot because of how bad the infection was. They said it was really badly infected.”
Initially, Angel thought the crash wasn’t as bad as it was. She explained, “I was in shock, I thought I just needed a plaster initially.”
“We went to the closest emergency place and they gave me stitches. It was a bad job. My cousin is a nurse and she was having to give them instructions. When I got to Australia, they told me how bad it was. It just didn’t stop bleeding after they stitched it up – I had to have my foot just over a bucket. It was turning a horrible color.”
Getting Help
It wasn’t until they got to Australia that the severity of Angel’s injuries began to set in. She underwent her first wash-out surgery on the day she arrived at the hospital.
“They said I was lucky that I got there when I did. I had a wound wash-out surgery the first day I got there – I think I still had grit in the wound.”
As the days passed, she had two more wash-out surgeries, but the wound wasn’t improving. That was when doctors decided to perform skin flap surgery on her foot.
“So they did the wash-out three times but as the skin kept dying they told me they’d need to take a chunk from my leg to replace it. They prepared me and said I’d have to look at the open wound and I had to stand under the shower with my bone exposed and wash it out before surgery.”
“It was painful and a bit of a shock but they were injecting me with morphine throughout. Then they marked out where they were going to take the skin from on my groin before putting me to sleep. After I woke up I needed a boot to learn to walk again, which took a couple of months. I’ve got what kind of looks like a big birthmark on top of my foot now – it’s just part of my story.”
Though she has been on a motorbike since then, she has decided to stay far away from flipflops, saying, “I’ve been super cautious when riding them now – always trainers. If I had trainers on I certainly don’t think it would have been as bad.”
References:
The Mirror – ‘I almost lost my foot in Bali thanks to wearing flipflops’
KentLive – Woman almost lost foot after bike crash in Bali while wearing flipflops
Yahoo! Life – Brit tourist’s warning after foot impaled in horror Bali moped crash
