Brittany McManus, Total Arm Reconstruction Testimonial

My name is Brittany McManus. I work for a company called CGC Comics. I’m the marketing manager for a company that greets and certifies comic books. I love to dive, scuba dive, golf, hike, pretty much anything active and I love it. I was out one night going camping on an island off the coast of Apollo Beach. There was a steering malfunction with the boat that I was on and I was thrown off of the boat with my little dog. I looked around and I thought maybe I could swim to land that was kind of behind me, but I turned back around and the boat was coming directly towards me. And I knew I didn’t have time to swim to one side or the other, so I tried to dive down and get missed by the propeller, but I had him in my hands and so I threw my arm up in the air, kind of like how you do to propel yourself underwater, and the boat just ran over me and amputated my arm about 90% luckily I got rescued. I got pulled out of the water and back into the boat. An ambulance took me to Tampa General and that’s where all the surgeries began. Dr. Stone happened to be the orthopedic surgeon on call that night and I’m really lucky that he was because I was in really, really bad shape. And a normal doctor probably would have amputated my arm, which would have been a normal course of action. I think he was intrigued maybe by the complications of trying to make all of this work again and once they realized that they could restore blood flow to my arm, he kind of just decided to take it on that he thought maybe there was a chance he could reconstruct my arm. And he did cause I still have it. Luckily like I’m super lucky that he was the doctor on call that night. Had it been anybody else I would have a stump right now.

Hands down what I value most about dealing with FOI and Dr. Stone, in particular, is level of skill, professionalism and patient care that they provide. And when I say that they go above and beyond, that’s an understatement. When I first got released from the hospital, they were there the day I got released from the hospital to be like supportive and woohoo. After a month you’re finally getting out I want to take on the world. I want to do all the things that I was doing before that, and I just feel like he’s supportive of it and his whole entire staff is supportive of it and they’re all kind of following along with my journey. They all like want to celebrate with me, and it’s just, it’s like having your own little support fan club early. It’s just awesome.