Broken glass causes months of pain

EMPANGENI resident Elandré van Rooyen (8) had two glass shards removed from his left foot on Thursday, after stepping on a broken glass at a children’s party in February.

‘After the incident, we immediately rushed him off to the emergency room,’ said mother Cecile van Rooyen.

‘The doctors managed to remove what we believed at the time to be all the glass from his left foot, and gave him a number of stitches in his heel, sole and top of his foot.

‘Elandré was sent home with pain killers and was on crutches for two weeks during the healing process.’

After the two weeks, Elandré eased back into his cricket and rugby, picking up a ‘funny’ walking style owing to the extent of his injury.

As a result, his parents took him to a physiotherapist for a session and got a home exercise plan to help strengthen his muscles and ligaments in his foot and to aid Elandré to walk ‘normally’ again.

‘Despite all that we did for him, he would still complain on some occasions about his foot being painful at bed time.

‘It was confusing that he could play sport, but complained that his foot was sore.

‘So we recently took him for another x-ray, just to find that there were a further two pieces of glass shards embedded deep in his foot.

‘This came as a complete surprise, as we thought that this injury was sorted out from his first visit at casualty back in February.’

Elandré underwent a complicated and stressful operation on Thursday, when the glass shards were successfully removed.

‘The surgery took two hours and we were very worried at the time, but happy and pleased with the outcome.

‘Elandré was discharged on Friday morning, and will be on pain killers and crutches until his follow-up on 22 July.

‘He is in good spirits and our little champion, as he handled this situation so well and we are so proud of him.’

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