Personal record · 21 September 2024 to the present

I fell in Berlin. My foot stopped lifting. The injury was immediate. The explanation, treatment, and legal questions took much longer.

An account of the injury, the four months it took to reach someone who could name it, and the practical things I worked out on the way. What I keep returning to is not blame. It is how unevenly the effort was shared.

21.09.24The fall

0 / 5Foot lift strength

151 daysUntil nerve surgery

Read the story

The story

The first fact was functional: my foot would not lift.

On 21 September 2024, I tripped while running in Berlin. My right knee took my full weight. The pain was immediate. So was foot drop: I could not lift my foot or toes, and the outside of my lower leg went numb.

The first scans looked for bone damage. The symptom that would define the following year was already there, but the path to a complete nerve diagnosis was not.

What happened next

What the record shows, in order.

Six moments changed what I understood about the injury.

Minimal redaction. Earlier institutions and individual clinicians remain unnamed. The Spanish clinic and surgeons who performed my operations are identified. Dates, reported findings, and the sequence remain.

0121 Sep 2024

The fall
The foot drop was immediate.
Emergency assessment documented knee trauma, pain, swelling, altered sensation, and possible bone and posterior cruciate ligament findings.
Day 0
0230 Oct 2024

The absent signal
No motor response from the common peroneal nerve.
Electromyography found no muscle response from stimulation of the right common peroneal nerve, while the tibial nerve response was preserved.
Day 39
038 Jan 2025

The diagnosis
Total axon damage. No sign of spontaneous regrowth.
A second electromyography localized a severe common peroneal nerve injury at the fibular head and recorded no voluntary activity in the affected muscles.
Day 109
0415 Jan 2025

A second system
In Madrid, a specialist looked at the nerve itself.
Ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging described a possible neuroma in continuity, alongside injuries to both cruciate ligaments and nearby soft tissue.
Day 116
0519 Feb 2025

Nerve surgery
The damaged segment was treated with a nerve graft.
At TraumaUnit in Barcelona, Dr. Joaquim Casañas Sintes performed the nerve graft. Recovery began on another scale, measured in millimetres of nerve growth, muscle response, sensation, and repetition.
Day 151
062 Sep 2025

Ligament surgery
Then the knee needed rebuilding too.
At TraumaUnit, Dr. Eduard Alentorn-Geli performed the ligament reconstruction. It started a second, overlapping rehabilitation process with its own brace, movement, loading, and therapy constraints.
Month 11

At first, I thought the body and the bureaucracy were keeping separate clocks.

The body counted in numb mornings, involuntary stabs of sensation, and the small humiliations of a foot that no longer followed. The system counted in referrals, appointments, short letters, and waiting rooms where the whole story had to begin again.

I learned to arrive carrying evidence. When a specialist finally gave the injury its name, relief and anger arrived together. A diagnosis is not a cure, but it changes the grammar of the future: What can still be saved? How much time is left? Who knows how?

03 · Inside the images

Scroll through the evidence.

Coronal plane 14 / 28

Coronal magnetic resonance image slice 14 of 28

Scroll the page or drag across the image

The front view

Twenty-eight layers, moving from front to back.

The January 2025 study was the first image set in my record to pair the knee structures with a direct look at the common peroneal nerve.

Report-guided colour

Move into a highlighted sliceThe later specialist report determines which anatomical region is coloured. Image intensity determines every dot.

Move through slices

These are anonymized pixel exports from my own scan. The colour layer maps real image brightness inside approximate regions named by the later report. It is not a clinical segmentation, diagnostic viewer, or independent medical interpretation. Across the page, the same pixel intensities become the living dither field.

Reading the report

What the January report said

What the later report named.

The findings below are paraphrased from the later radiology report. The coloured image regions are approximate, report-guided landmarks. What was unambiguous on the day of the fall was functional: my foot would not lift. This record cannot prove what an earlier scan would have shown.

Common peroneal nerve

Marked thickening and findings suggestive of a neuroma in continuity near the distal thigh.

Cruciate ligaments

Evidence of extensive partial anterior cruciate ligament injury and partial posterior cruciate ligament injury.

Nearby structures

Injury around the biceps femoris insertion and a smaller partial injury at the popliteus insertion.

The system map

The guide I wish I had

What I wish someone had told me at the start.

I began keeping every report, scan, referral, prescription, and dated note together. The record became the only reliable way to carry the whole injury from one appointment to the next.

What I keep coming back to

The fall was luck. What came after was not evenly shared.

Nobody caused me to trip. From that point on, though, every step that turned out to matter — the right scan, the right specialist, the right question asked in the right week — I ended up finding myself.

I had things many patients do not. Savings that could absorb two operations. A second country whose health system I could use, in a language I already spoke. Work where reading medical papers at night is not unusual. Time to make thirty phone calls. So I got there. Late, but I got there.

What I cannot stop thinking about is the version of me without any of that, who is told to wait another six months and simply waits. That is the part I find unfair. Not that a clinician made a judgement call I disagree with, because judgement calls are the work and some of them turn out wrong. It is that whether a call gets revisited seems to depend on what the patient happens to be carrying.

The law already asks for both of these at the same time. What it does not settle is who notices when only one of them is happening.

Section 12

Economy

Care must be sufficient, appropriate, economical, and may not exceed what is necessary.

Read the economic-efficiency rule in the Fifth Book of the German Social Code

Section 70

Humanity

Care must also be needs-based, humane, medically current, and of the required quality.

Read the quality and humanity rule in the Fifth Book of the German Social Code

First hours

Describe function, not only pain.

Ask for every new loss of movement, sensation, or function to appear in the examination and discharge record. Before leaving, ask what has been ruled out, what remains uncertain, and who owns the follow-up.

Use 116117 for urgent care outside practice hoursCall 112 for a life-threatening emergency.

The practical toolkit

A case someone can understand in one minute.

A specialist should be able to see the trajectory before the appointment clock starts.

The portable record

Five layers. Always in date order.

Tap each layer to see what belongs there.

01One-page timeline ↗

Dates, changes in function, major findings, treatments, current limitations, and the three questions you need answered next.

02Clinical records ↗

Emergency notes, discharge letters, specialist letters, operation reports, and a current medication list.

03Tests and image data ↗

Reports plus the original files. Ask radiology for the data in the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard, not only screenshots.

04Recovery evidence ↗

Brief dated notes on movement, sensation, pain, walking aids, therapy, and changes. Photos or videos can add context when your clinician agrees they are useful.

05Administration ↗

Referrals, prescriptions, insurer correspondence, receipts, invoices, letters sent, and proof of delivery.

A useful first move

Ask for the complete treatment record.

A concise German template, based on the patient access right in section 630g of the German Civil Code.

Official starting points

Save these before you need them.

Urgent care

Medical on-call service

Urgent medical help outside normal practice hours when the situation is not life-threatening.

Your rights

Federal Ministry of Health patient guide

Access, information, consent, records, and routes when treatment may have gone wrong.

Independent advice

Foundation for Independent Patient Advice Germany

Free help with medical, insurance, billing, and social-law questions.

Complaints and mediation

German Medical Association patient portal

Routes to regional medical chambers, expert commissions, and mediation bodies.

August 2026

I am still recovering.
The case is still open.

I am publishing this while the story is still unfolding. If it helps one person arrive at the right appointment with the right records and a clearer question, it has done its job. The disputed expert findings, and the documents behind them, are on a separate page.

Return to the beginning

I fell in Berlin. My foot stopped lifting. The injury was immediate. The explanation, treatment, and legal questions took much longer.

The first fact was functional: my foot would not lift.

What the record shows, in order.

The foot drop was immediate.

No motor response from the common peroneal nerve.

Total axon damage. No sign of spontaneous regrowth.

In Madrid, a specialist looked at the nerve itself.

The damaged segment was treated with a nerve graft.

Then the knee needed rebuilding too.

Scroll through the evidence.

Twenty-eight layers, moving from front to back.