A young Calgary girl who nearly lost her leg in a boating accident in Muskoka last summer is back to rock-climbing and dancing, thanks to a series of successful surgeries.
Augusta Toews, 7, was out on a boat last summer during a trip when the vessel slowed and Augusta flew over the bow, hitting the hull. Recalling the incident, Augusta’s mother, Leslie Baker-Toews, said at first she thought her daughter was unharmed.
“When she came up I saw her and thought, ‘There she is, she’s going to be OK.’ And then she started to scream, ‘My leg’s gone,” Leslie Baker-Toews said.
All of sudden, the family was in their “worst nightmare,” Leslie said. Her parents scooped Augusta out of the water and fashioned a makeshift tourniquet around her leg, which was more than 90 per cent severed.
Augusta was airlifted to Toronto's SickKids Hospital, with a stop in Barrie, Ont. to replenish her blood supply. An emergency trauma team then set to work reconstructing her bones, muscles, arteries and veins.
“It was very severe,” said Dr. Gregory Borschel, staff surgeon in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Hospital for Sick Children.
“The nerve was completely divided in half and because of the severity of it, we had to do what's called nerve grafting, where we take a piece of nerve from elsewhere in Augusta's own body and then graft the defect to bridge the gap.”
Using new technology, the care team regenerated Augusta's nerves with electrical stimulation.
Augusta is now back to being an active seven-year-old, enjoying dancing and rock climbing.
“It's just some things I do differently than I did before,” Augusta said.
For her mother, her daughter’s recovery “couldn’t have gone better after that horrible moment in time.”
“Everything lined up,” Leslie Baker-Toews said. “Every angel was there.”
With a report from CTV Toronto's Natalie Johnson.
