It’s been well over a year now but people still have vivid memories of what happened to Chicago Bears tight end Zach Miller back in 2017. They can see the sequence in their dream, or in this case nightmares. He runs a post route to the end zone. Mitch Trubisky throws him a pretty ball. Miller corrals it with one arm but as he’s going to the ground his leg gets caught up in the turf, horribly dislocating his knee.
It was one of the most vivid, gutwrenching injuries football fans have ever witnessed, and that’s saying a lot. Miller was rushed off the field to a nearby hospital where it was later reported that he came dangerously close to needing his leg amputated below the knee due to the severity. Never mind playing football. Some people wondered if he’d ever be able to walk properly again.
Thankfully the doctors made a successful surgery, saved the leg and Miller began his climb back to full health. The Bears did a classy thing by signing him to a new contract for the 2018 season, paying him a good salary while he continued to rehab. Soon he was walking again and before everybody knew it, he successfully began to run. It’s a wonderful story.
Yet to this day people still haven’t quite grasped how ludicrously brutal this injury was. So a man named Dr. Brian Sutterer decided to help explain on YouTube.
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Zach Miller came literal hours away from losing his leg after the injury
Suffice to say, the details are best left to him for an explanation. Sutterer does explain though that Miller tore something called the Popliteal artery in the back of his leg between the thigh and shin bones. When Miller’s knee bent the complete opposite direction, this artery was severed and the blood stopped flowing to the bottom half of his left leg.
If muscles in the human body are no longer supplied by blood, they eventually die. This is where the risk comes in because dead muscles can become infected. Infections are prone to spreading if not dealt with swiftly. Typically a person has just 6-8 hours to restore flow before the muscles die. That’s why amputation is so often considered if the injury isn’t dealt with quickly enough.
If the Bears training staff had not rushed him to the hospital when they did, it’s likely he never would’ve had the surgery in time to save his leg.
