Amputee keen to get on with it

Amputee keen to get on with it

KEITH LYNCH

"I was a bit more p ... d off at losing the second leg. I was a bit annoyed losing the first leg because I'd plans of staying on that tug," Charlie Durham says matter-of-factly at his Timaru home.

Durham, a 54-year-old former seaman, has spent his life on boats and motorbikes, but they have cost him both legs in freak accidents three years apart.

"I was getting used to the one leg. [It wasn't] too bad. I was just starting to get the swing of it when this second accident happened."

Durham calls himself a "battler" and talks openly about the cruel twists of fate that have put him in a wheelchair.

"We have to battle on, don't we? We can't just sit back and die in the corner, can we?"

In November 2007 he was on a tugboat off New Brighton working on the Christchurch sewerage outfall when a crewmate pulled in some slack wire and hooked it around a peg.

The wire tightened, almost slicing Durham's left leg off.

More than a year later, a one-legged Durham left the Christchurch District Court on crutches after being awarded $50,000 in reparation from the boat's operator, Heron Construction.

Durham, originally from Invercargill, has "always been a seaman".

He had a prosthetic attached, got back to playing golf and even planned on returning to work.

"I thought I was doing all right with one leg for a wee while," he says.

"I thought I might have been able to [go back to work]. I was looking at buying a boat to go touring. I'd live on the boat and do four to six months work."

In November 2010, Durham was riding his adapted motorcycle near Rangitata in South Canterbury.

He recalls a car pulling out on to State Highway 1 near Rangitata and heading towards the Chequered Flag Cafe & Bar.

Moments later, he clipped the car and was flung from his bike.

"It's all gone out of my head really. I can't remember it at all," he says.

"I just caught the left-hand corner of [the car]. I obviously tried to avoid it.

"But whether it was because I didn't have my leg to manoeuvre like you can on a bike, I don't know. I can blame lots of things now."

Paramedics found Durham had suffered a massive fracture to his right thigh. Someone had used a belt and a branch to fashion a crude tourniquet to restrict blood flow.

"I remember cutting up his trouser leg and going, 'Hello, what's going on here?' And that's when we found there was a prosthetic limb," Westpac rescue helicopter and St John paramedic Rod Partington recalls.

Durham was flown to Christchurch Hospital and three weeks later woke up and was sent to Burwood Hospital.

After being released, Durham spent three months in Kaiapoi with a friend before moving back to Timaru.

He remembers being thrown out of his chair to the floor when the February 22 earthquake hit.

"My mate was checking things out and he came in with a neighbour and picked me up and threw me back on the chair."

Graham Flanagan, the national prosthetics manager at the Artificial Limb Centre, said losing both legs in separate accidents was "incredibly rare".

He has only seen a case like Durham's "once or twice in 34 years".

Now, home-made ramps lead to the door of Durham's Timaru home, where he lives with flatmate Ian.

Mundane tasks can be difficult. He needs to sit on several cushions to raise himself up to do the dishes and has to be careful not to tip backwards.

Handling hot dishes from the oven needs extra care.

Even a tripped breaker in a fusebox means a call for help.

"I don't really want people to look after me hand and foot, but it's just the occasional thing that's hard to do."

Durham has ridden motorbikes and worked on boats all his life but he has not been to sea since losing his second leg.

He could ride a "trike motorcycle", but does not want to.

"All the years I've been motorbiking, I've looked on trikes are being, you know, s.... I don't think I'd be safe on it."

Instead, Durham uses a modified golf buggy to get about Timaru. "It does about 12kmh. People get out of the way when they see me coming down the street. I'd get out two or three times a week and blast around," he says.

The golf buggy is vital. While a prosthetic can be placed on his left stump, there is too little left of his right leg for an artificial limb.

He has tried hopping around on one prosthetic but does not see the point.

"It doesn't really help. You end up on two crutches and you can't carry anything. I'm better off in the wheelchair. At least I can carry a tray or a plate of whatever."

Durham is looking forward to a change. His parents and two grown-up daughters live in Invercargill.

"Every now and again I get a wee bit p..... off, but you just have to carry on and live with what you've got."

- © Fairfax NZ News