Amputee Snowboarding

What a week! As one of my friends put it, at least this blog will start getting funny again after I get back on all of the pain medications. Something to look forward to.

I might as well be on staff at Dr. Buchanan's office. There are only 52 weeks in a year, and I stand a good chance at being in his office for over 20 of them. All I know is this guy is getting his picture on their wall of fame.

I have another scheduled visit with Dr. Buchanan on Friday, August 6th at 1100am, so there's a chance I could be in surgery on Monday, August 9th. Or it could be the week of August 16th. I won't know until next Friday.

My Dad passed along my latest x-rays to a radiologist with over 50 years of experience. He said there were some good things and some bad things.

What's good? The bottom pieces of my tibia are in a relatively good alignment with my talus bone and there are signs of bone growth in between my fibula and tibia. You can see the bone growth above just to the left of the tibia plate near the top.

What's bad? The three bottom screws in the fibula show tracking, a sign that the screws could be loose. You can see this in the dark halos surrounding the three screws. It also doesn't appear that the fibula has a great chance of union without some help, which is probably where my donor bone comes into play.

Bottom line -- the radiologist said this was fixable. That's the impression I got from Dr. Buchanan, just not in so many words.

So I'm not leaning towards amputation as much as I had been Wednesday and Thursday. I brought this up with my family doctor when I spoke with him over the phone yesterday. He was extremely opposed to the idea, and he hasn't even seen my ankle yet.

I ran across this awesome video on YouTube. They're speaking Italian, but you don't need to understand what they're saying to see the awesome.

I didn't realize it was possible, but it is! And not only is it possible, but you can do the same things with only one leg. This blows my mind.
Huge thank you to everyone for your continued support. This is a minor setback and only sweetens the deal for that first ride back on my board, now delayed until late 2011 or early 2012.