One night, sitting up in bed with his wife, he told her: “You know what? It’s going to be OK. After initially feeling despondent, wallowing in self-pity, Smith grew optimistic. At the time, he was told he wouldn’t be able to lift up his ankle or foot again. It was either that or salvage it by taking muscle tissue from other parts of his body - like his right calf muscle and quadricep muscle from his other thigh, along with some overlying skin - and transplanting them into the leg, which they opted to do. Alex Smith in July 2019 The Washington Post via Getty Im “Maybe cutting off your leg is the best thing?” the 35-year-old Smith wondered. By then, his leg was a skeleton of its former self, virtually nothing but bone between the knee and ankle on one side. As doctors opened up the leg, they found infections up to his thigh, leading to eight different debridement removals. He had four different kinds of bacteria that were ravaging the leg. The dead skin and infected muscle tissue had to be removed through a procedure known as debridement because it cannot regenerate and would allow the infection to spread. He developed sepsis, a life-threatening condition caused by the body’s poor response to infection. “I couldn’t fathom seeing this in a war movie,” said his wife, Elizabeth. It was the result of necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating bacteria. Parts of the leg became black from dead skin and infected muscle tissue. But Smith developed bacteria in the blood in his leg, his temperature spiked and his blood pressure dropped. Initially, the hope was he would only be in the hospital a few days, after getting the fractures operated on and three metal plates placed in his leg. Alex Smith The Washington Post via Getty Images He was sacked by Watt and Kareem Jackson, and his leg was destroyed, part of it hanging in the wrong direction, bone breaking through the skin. It shows how bad it got for him after suffering a spiral and compound fracture of his right tibia and a fractured right fibula in a loss to the Texans on Nov. Then comes the difficult-to-watch injury 10 games into the two-time Pro Bowler’s first year with the then-first-place Redskins. 1 overall pick’s rough start in the NFL, losing his job with the 49ers to Colin Kaepernick and with the Chiefs to Mahomes after successful seasons at both stops. It includes cameos from Urban Meyer, Patrick Mahomes, Andy Reid, JJ Watt and Jim Harbaugh and details the former No. It tracks him from a young age, as an under-recruited quarterback who blossomed into a huge star at Utah. The piece gives insight into Smith the person, tough and determined. “Can I go play quarterback again? Can I push it that far?” “Football might not be out of the question,” he says during the show that will be aired Friday night by ESPN and was viewed by The Post. The gripping E:60 documentary, titled “Project 11,” on Redskins quarterback Alex Smith’s arduous recovery from his broken right leg takes viewers behind the scenes of the gruesome 2018 injury, how dangerous it got in the days that followed - Smith needed 17 surgeries in all and nearly lost his leg - and his long road back to what he still hopes is a return to the field one day. Ex-QB's leg scar in new photo a gruesome reminder of injuryĮx-NFL star slams Commanders coach for 'driving the bus' over embattled QBĮx-NFL star reveals daughter's harrowing emergency brain surgery
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