RIVERVIEW, Mich. – It was twelve years ago, during a golf trip to Myrtle Beach, that Dr. Craig Everingham of Riverview first injured his ankle.
His ball landed in the rough, near the water. The ground was mucky.
“I’m digging in, I’m ready to go. I hear a rustle behind me. I look and there’s an alligator,” remembered Everingham.
The alligator had its jaws open, so Everingham tried to make a hasty retreat.
“I jerk my foot. It kind of stuck, and I pulled my ankle. I dislocated it,” said Everingham. “We put it back in place, ace-wrapped it, taped it, typical stupid guy, because you’ve got to finish the tournament.”
Doctors often make terrible patients, and Dr. Everingham was no exception.
“Came home and I was supposed to see my orthopedic. Never did. I was limping, and it healed crooked, so I had a little, little tilt, so my back started to hurt quite a bit,” said Everingham.
Everingham retired last year after 45 years in family practice. The old injury and arthritis finally lead him to get an ankle replacement last September.
“Surgery was fine. On November the first, I got out of the shower and looked down and a piece of yellow was down on my foot, and it was my tendon. The wound had not healed 100 percent, and it popped out,” said Everingham.
Wounds that won’t heal are a common problem in people with diabetes.
“I’m diabetic. I’m old. I got skinny legs, you know, I’m 74 years old, and I heard that from all the surgeons,” said Everingham.
But when three skin grafts failed, the situation became very serious.
Everingham sought help from Dr. John Felder, a reconstructive plastic surgeon at Corewell Health Beaumont in Royal Oak.
“It’s the type of wound that, if untreated, could lead to a serious infection or amputation,” explained Felder. “Skin grafts are a really old but reliable tool. The problem is that they don’t work on every kind of wound. So there are certain structures in the body, like tendons and bones that don’t really have a lot of blood flow in them.”
Felder specializes in microsurgery. To solve the problem of transplanting skin to areas without good blood flow, he transplants a flap of skin with the blood vessels still attached and reconnects them over the wound. Those blood vessels are about as thick as a dime.
“We do it under a microscope with just little teeny stitches. So it’s a very delicate thing,” said Felder.
It’s a painstaking specialty, but also his passion.
“The reason I only do reconstructive surgery is because when I was a teenager, I had a severe injury,” said Felder. “I actually got run over by a boat propeller in a water skiing accident. And, you know, probably should have died, or at least lost my legs, but one of the people that took care of me was the plastic surgeon who reconstructed the wounds and everything like that, and obviously it made a huge difference for me, so it brings a lot of meaning to my life to kind of come full circle and repay the debt to others.”
It’s an effort that’s making a huge difference to his patients. Everingham had the microsurgery in February.
“I said, ‘Well, you’ve got six weeks. My golf league starts in six weeks.’ That was kind of our little joke,” said Everingham.
Turns out, it was no joke. Everingham is back to being a regular at the Riverview Highlands Golf Course.
His ankle is still a little stiff from the original replacement, but getting better every day. He is able to do more with his grandchildren and is back to driving.
“Unable to drive for eight months. All of a sudden, I got in my car and I go, ‘I can go wherever I want. I don’t have to call anybody,’” said Everingham. “I have Dr. Felder to thank because without him, I may have lost this foot.”
It’s an opportunity that Felder wants more patients to have. He came to Royal Oak from St. Louis to bring this specialized care to people in Michigan. He is working with other experts to build a statewide or regional limb preservation program to reduce the number of amputations due to diabetes and wounds that won’t heal.
“What I want to do is just get this message out there to patients and their families that if you or somebody you love has been told that you need an amputation, or you’ve got a wound that won’t heal, I want people to know that, you know, somebody out there cares and wants to fix the problem,” said Felder. “Most people aren’t aware that there’s a specialty of medicine that does this. Most doctors aren’t aware of that.”
Felder said not everyone will be a candidate for the procedure, but he believes many people could benefit greatly from being evaluated. The surgery typically is covered by insurance because it’s intended to prevent the need for an amputation.
“To see it come to fruition, and you know, and have somebody do as well as Dr. Everingham did is really gratifying,” said Felder.
To reach out to Dr. Felder’s office, click here.