5/21/2008 10:45:00 AM 'Please doctor, don't cut my leg off' Young and athletic chef pleaded in vain after horrific road accident
Radical change: Elton Planes led an action-packed outdoor lifestyle until his accident last month. Now he is trapped in his Hamilton apartment while he waits for a false leg and rehabilitation to get his life back on track. *Photo by Tim Hall
Mr. Planes with his fiancé Chai Abuan, with whom he had built a happy life in Bermuda.
Elton Planes spent that Saturday afternoon running and jumping around a basketball court.
Thirty-six hours later he was lying in a hospital bed with one leg missing at the knee. Bermudians are getting used to reading the all-too-frequent stories of people who lose their lives on the island's roads. But for every person who is killed, dozens more are maimed or disfigured for life.
Elton Planes, 28, was a keen fisherman and regular on the basketball and volleyball courts. A chef at busy Bistro 12, his job kept him on the run all day. Now he is laid up at home, wondering what the future holds.
He said: "Every day I wake up and it's still a shock - to see I don't have a leg. It's an instinct, to think it's still there and I can still get up and go out and fish. I love the outdoors; I love basketball, volleyball; those are the things I live for. Now everything is so different. It's like going back to zero."
Traffic lights
Mr. Planes, who lives on Brunswick Street in Hamilton, was riding his motorcycle home from visiting a friend's house at around 2am on Sunday, April 13. He says he was passing through a green light on the corner of Church Street and Parliament Street when a car ran a red light and hit him on his left side. The collision almost entirely severed Mr. Plane's left leg. He remained conscious while the ambulance arrived and during the journey to hospital.
He said: "The doctor came and he said: 'We are going to do everything we can to save your leg. We don't want to cut it.' I was conscious the whole time; I was chatting to the nurses, the doctor; I called my fiancé. I didn't look at the leg.
"But I had friends who visited and they said the leg looked like sliced pork meat. It was only held on by the skin; the bone and flesh were cut through. We went into the operation and I was saying to the doctor: 'Please don't cut it; do anything.' But he said that it [the injury] was terrible."
Mr. Planes was put to sleep and woke to find that surgeons had to amputate his leg. He is now waiting for a prosthetic limb and faces months of rehabilitation to learn to walk again. Mr. Planes, a native of the Philippines, has been in Bermuda since 2002, and worked as a sous chef at Flanagan's pub on Front Street before moving to Bistro 12 two months ago. At Flanagan's he met his fiancé, fellow Filipina Chai Abuan, 25.
Bistro 12 have been very supportive, Mr. Planes says, and are being patient while he determines if he will ever again be able to cope with a busy kitchen.
Mr. Planes's basketball team, family and other friends have also been helping him cope. However, he is disappointed with the police response to the accident. The driver of the car was stopped by police, but has not been charged.
Mr. Planes said: "It has been a month now and they don't have any information [about the accident]. A policeman has come to see me once. I lost my leg and they came to see me once. I don't know if they care."
