Window Cleaner has Broken Leg for 50 Years

After suffering terrible pains in his leg for 50 years, pensioner Roy Calloway thought it was about time for a proper check-up. During a 35-year career in a local steelworks, he often had to lean on a broom when the agony got too bad. But when doctors finally X-rayed his right leg, they made a shock discovery – he’d been walking around on a badly broken leg for half a century. The retired steelworker was shocked to discover his leg had remained broken in several places since he came off his new 350 Enfield bike on a twisting mountain road in the Brecon Beacons in the late 1950s. He cracked his femur, tibia and fibula bones in the accident and spent six months in Tredegar Hospital. Doctors worked to re-set his bones with steel pins and a traction set up of weights and pulleys. After spending two years hobbling around with the help of crutches and walking sticks, he returned to work sweeping floors at Ebbw Vale Steelworks, where he remained for 35 years. When the pain got too much, brave Roy would never complain, but just lean on his brush.
The dad of two, who also worked as a window cleaner, went to his GP a few years ago about his leg. They found it was an inch shorter than the left and gave him a special shoe to walk around with. But when it became unbearable again, he decided to go back. A further investigation showed the two broken sections of his femur, the thigh bone, did not knit and were joined only by the bone marrow. The same happened to the bones in his shin. “I had an X-ray which showed the leg was still broken and it had never healed up tidy,” said Roy.