Dr. Sarah Haller was shocked to see one of the “most extreme” amputations of her career when patient Patty came into her office asking for help relieving the pain that’s plagued her since she lost the toes of her left foot more than a decade ago. In a PopCulture.com exclusive sneak peek of Monday’s all-new My Feet Are Killing Me, the TLC star inspects just what went wrong after Patty contracted a serious condition.
“[In] 2006, I lost my toes,” the patient explains of her predicament. “I had an amputation on my left foot. The bones keep cutting through and that’s why I have to keep going to the doctor, to make sure it doesn’t get infected and, God forbid, something worse happens.” Patty had no idea how her life was about to change forever 15 years ago when she first noticed a black blister that began at her toes. “Within 24 hours, it had worked its way around, and I couldn’t stand up,” she tells Haller, who responds with shocked sympathy to hear that Patty had developed dry gangrene. “They thought I was dying,” she tells the doctor.
Videos by PopCulture.com
To the camera after the initial inspection, Haller admits there is “a lot going on” with Patty’s case after losing much of her foot to gangrene. “Gangrene is basically where the blood flow that usually goes to the toes, no blood goes through,” she explains to the viewers at home. “Everything just kind of shrivels up and dies and it becomes black and hard and crusted, where you can actually literally pop off the toe like a bottle cap.”
Asking Patty to remove her shoe, brace and wraps to see what she is working with, Haller realizes that the case is even more extreme than she had feared, with Patty having undergone a “guillotine amputation.” She tells the camera of her initial assessment, “So I take off her shoe and I take off this brace that she’s wearing, and I see this, ball, almost like a peg leg. It looks excruciating and you can just see how tight that skin is over that bone.”
“This is a guillotine amputation,” she continues of the case now facing her. “A guillotine is kind of like a butcher knife, kind of comes down and just slices the foot right in the middle. This is one of the most extreme amputations I’ve seen in a foot before.” Will Dr. Haller be able to help Patty embrace a less painful next step in life? My Feet Are Killing Me airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on TLC.