Help Tracy live a pain free life
Tracy Lee Watt needs to have an operation to help relieve the chronic pain she lives with.
Amputee Tracy Lee Watt (50) lives in persistent pain after her life-changing bike accident some three years ago.
At the time of the accident, Tracy was living on the South Coast.
Today, she lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Johannesburg.
She can’t work as she has pain where her arm was amputated, as well as phantom limb pain.
“It’s been three-and-a-half years, and I am still suffering this debilitating pain from my waking moment until sleeping time at night. I don’t feel like a decent mom to my children. I don’t leave the bedroom unless I have to take the children to school. My depression is through the roof; I feel like I want to jump off a bridge at this stage,” she said.
She managed to see a neurosurgeon recently who explained that the nerves in her neck need to be cut through to stop the pain signal going to the brain. This procedure is called an open dorsal rhizotomy. Her doctor is Dr Percy Miller of the Advanced Pain Institute.
“They also want to do a dorsal root entry zone lesion, which is a burn along the spinal cord. Or, I’ll live like this forever, and the pain will only just get worse,” she said.
Tracy said the third option was way too expensive, so she is happy to go with this one if you could support her via BackaBuddy: Tracy’s Surgery or contact her on
082 5746225.
Tracy’s accident occurred on Women’s Day, August 9, 2021. Dressed in casual tracksuit pants and a jacket, Tracy was on the back of a motorbike near Southbroom, her arms wrapped around the driver.
It was dark, and before they knew it, a stationary truck with no hazards or lights on ‘popped up out of the blue.’
Her friend tried to swerve to miss it. But unfortunately, both the driver’s and Tracy’s left arms hit the side of the truck.
Her left arm was crushed, and she was thrown off the bike and rolled onto the highway.
She fractured her right knee, and all the skin pulled from her body and face as she rolled into the road.
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