United they stand
Love is the road to recovery for East Rockaway amputee
East Rockaway resident Bill Evans proposed to Donna Masterson on one knee in front of their Christmas tree last year. “Which was difficult,” he said, “because I only had one knee.” Masterson made it less difficult by saying yes.
It has gotten easier for Evans to joke about the horrific circumstances of a Friday the 13th accident in 2010 that cost him his left leg and led to two years of constant pain, hip-replacement surgery and intensive physical and emotional rehabilitation.
A retired electrician, Evans, now 66, loved to ride his motorcycle and spent a good amount of time on the road. But on Aug. 13, 2010, as he was cruising close to home on Atlantic Avenue in East Rockaway, he was hit by a car and thrown off his bike. A nurse who came upon the scene created a makeshift tourniquet that stopped the serious bleeding in his left arm — and most likely saved his life. His motorcycle was totaled, and Evans wasn’t in much better shape. His left leg was so badly mangled that it was later amputated, his right hip was fractured, his right knee was broken and he needed two rods in his right calf.
“I was in a lot of pain at first,” Evans recalled. “My left leg below the knee was shredded.” He spent 50 days in Nassau University Medical Center, the first four in the ICU. Masterson, who was working for Con Ed, was able to be with him for those first days in intensive care.
“They said he could be in there for weeks,” said Donna, 45, who is now Bill’s wife, “but he was going full speed ahead.” Unfortunately, however, he broke his hip again two weeks after the accident during a physical therapy session and he had to start all over again, now wearing a brace. “It was a huge setback,” she said. “He could only move 10 degrees for months … it was a trial just getting him in and out of bed.”
Coming home
Physical therapist Sarit Mizrachi, of Woodmere, and nurse Maria Paul, both of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, worked with Evans after his surgery. On the first day, they found him confined to the first floor of Masterson’s home.
