Surgery Two: Dominated

Here I am in the pre-op room, resting in my fancy gown. This thing had a state-of-the-art, built-in central heating system to keep my body warm while I was under anesthesia. It was also purple.

I had not received any medications at this point.

Surgery two was very different from the first one 19 days ago. There was no time to think before the first surgery. I had the accident at 10AM and was under the knife by 2PM. In between those two points in time I had been subjected to numerous pain medications.

I went into the second surgery with plenty of time to think about it. We were a little more anxious as a result. Even though my tibia was destroyed, I thought I'd handle the pain much better this time around than I did in the first surgery.

As you can tell from this post-op picture, my prediction was inaccurate.

Originally I was scheduled to stay at the hospital for 23 hours. It wound up being twice that. Why? My surgeon beat me up.

The surgery was about 3 hours long. Dr. Buchanan had to make a much larger incision on the top of my ankle than originally planned. He removed approximately 20% of the tibia bone fragments. The large pieces were rotated 180 degrees around before they were secured to my second internal fixator. I was given bone graft to help replace the material removed during surgery. Apparently my soft tissue damage is minimal, so I might luck out with little to no tendon problems.

I also learned more about what happened during my accident. When I hit the tree, my right foot was bent backwards, toes toward shin. This force broke my fibula and crushed my tibia. It also stretched and severely bruised a nerve that runs along the backside of my ankle. This is the reason I have no feeling in the soul of my foot and first two toes. But since the nerve was not cut or pinched, I stand a chance of regaining some of that feeling.

Finally, I got to keep my external fixator! After a closer look, the bars are not made of titanium. They're probably some kind of carbon composite.

I thoroughly enjoyed having this metal bar threaded through the inside of my right heel bone.

These screws are wicked. They have a very sharp drill bit built into the tips. Look how far down this went into my shin!

Not sure what my plan is with the external fixator. Any ideas?