We believe the alternatives are as follows.  We take you to surgery, open the leg and first try to restore the veins and arteries to restore the circulation.  If this succeeds we proceed to replace the knee joint, graft some skin on the area on the back of your leg and hope for the best.  We doubt that the chances for success are better then a couple percent.  Even if the operation is possible other things may go wrong after it is done.  If we cannot restore circulation we are faced with amputating your leg above the knee.   Looking at the situation we expect you to have a residual limb that is long enough to make good use of a prosthesis possible.  Without circulation to your leg, gangrene will set in.  We will be forced to take the leg at a later time after it is poisonous.  There will be risk to your life.  Wait and see is not an alternative.

Penny covered her face with her hands.  She sobbed for nearly three minutes and then uncovered her face and wiped her eyes with a tissue her mother handed to her.  “Ask Daddy to come in.”  Her dad slipped from the back of the group, he had been there the whole time, just standing quietly.  Bart moved over behind him to support the man who was obviously shaken.

“Honey, I’m here, I stayed.  I wanted to hear what the doctors said.”

“Daddy, what do you think?  What should I do?”

Her leg was covered, “Honey, do you mind if I see your leg?”

“No daddy,” He pulled back the sheet to see the leg, let out a sob and covered her leg.

She looked at him, “What do you think.”

“Honey, it’s bad, I can tell you that, it is really bad.  They aren’t kidding you.  I saw two guys in Nam that were hit in the legs, we couldn’t get to them for over 30 hours and they got gangrene.  It was real bad, they both nearly died.  You have to decide what to do, it’s your leg and you’re a big girl, you have to make that decision.  But your mama and I want you alive.  We don’t care about much else.  And you’re made of tough stuff, no matter what, you’ll do fine.”