VIDEO: Robert Costello gets the leg up he needs
This local has a new prosthetic leg more than a year after his leg was cut off.
MBOMBELA – More than a year after he lost his leg, Robert Costello (54) still has phantom pains.
“If my one leg itches, I still want to scratch with the foot of the other leg, but then I realise it’s not there,”
Costello said, laughing.
He lost his leg in June last year when it had to be amputated due to an infection. When the team of the Paul Steyn Foundation visited the Lowveld earlier this year, they tracked Costello down in Ngodwana and helped him to obtain a prosthetic leg.
Since then he has been practising with his new limb – a lot. In-between, it had to be returned for adjustments to be made a few times.
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At the time of the interview, he was once again temporarily without the leg.
Through all the trials and tribulations he has had to face, he never lost his sense of humour.
“When my leg was just removed a doctor asked me if I had any major weight loss and I said ‘well, yeah, I just lost a whole leg’.”
Costello has had circulation problems in his leg his whole life. In the winter of 2016 he got a small cut on his big toe. When he visited the doctor it had already become infected, so much so that they needed to amputate his toe.
“But they only removed a small part of my toe and it was not enough to keep the infection from spreading,” Costello said.
Just before Christmas in 2016 he saw that there were maggots in his wound. The infection then spread and in June last year doctors at Rob Ferreira Hospital told him to prepare himself, as his leg would be amputated.
The first time it was cut off just above the knee.
“But I could not sit still after the operation and I fell. They then had to operate again and cut it just below my thigh,” Costello said.
After his operation the hospital staff said it would take six to eight months before he could receive a prosthetic leg, but almost a year later he still had not received one.
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Thanks to the sponsorship of the Paul Steyn Foundation, which helps people obtain prosthetic limbs, he is now in the capable hands of the prosthetic team at Nelspruit Mediclinic and could not be happier.
“It still feels very weird and different, but also very exciting to be getting a new leg.”
