Football Disappointments, Infection Progress, and Surprises!

The Redskins are my team. I'm from Oklahoma. I despise Texas with a passion.

It was a natural fit to become a Redskins fan when I moved here.

Tonight was the big rivalry game at Dallas, so we hosted a watch party with our friends. If you don't know me, I tend to -- prematurely boast our wins. Tonight, I created a "Cowboys Excuses Box," for the two Cowboys fans to write excuses on paper for why they didn't win.

At the end of the game, we'd draw one of the excuses and that would decide why the Cowboy's lost.

I even created Troy and myself custom coffee mugs.

Here you see the Redskins arrow through the Cowboys star, and Jerry Jones, the gregarious owner of the Cowboys, picking his nose.

Here you see the other two pictures on the mug.

On top, Tony Romo is crying about something. I'm not sure what, because there are a million pictures of Romo crying about something on the Internet. I'm assuming it's because he just heard R.E.M broke up.

The other picture at the bottom is of our good friend Binoy. While he's a Dallas Cowboys fan, we decided to make him a custom Buffalo Bills jersey earlier this year.

Here's the quick story behind that. The number on the jersey is Scott Norwood's, the kicker for the Bills infamous for missing a 47 yarder wide right that cost he Bills the Super Bowl. There are daily situations, such as a failure to successfully parallel park, when we tell Binoy, "ooooh, wide right."

The name, "Hands," is a nick name that Binoy claims was given to him in collegiate flag football for having great hands as a wide receiver. No one has been able to corroborate this story, and Binoy has declined offers to display his talents in a mock combine.

Because of the overwhelming lack of evidence to support the validity of the nickname, we decided to start routinely calling Binoy, "Hands," to remind him that he should never make such claims without the ability to back them up.

The other half of the mug is the Redskins' fight song.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to sing the fight song much tonight after the Cowboys beat us with only field goals. It's embarrassing. I haven't stopped receiving text messages from Binoy and Crystal.

So, the ankle. How's it doing?

Much better -- all due to Dr. Jeng. I am convinced you cannot find a better doctor than Dr. Cliff Jeng. Since Friday evening, when we first discovered a potential issue, he has been in daily contact with us over email.

Each day, I take high resolution images of my leg before and after cleaning it. I upload them to a Picasa web album and send Cliff an email with a brief description of the changes, improvements, and any new developments of the pin site situation.

Here's how it's gone so far.

Friday, September 23rd

I spoke with Dr. Jeng on the phone Friday evening. He asked that I start sending him daily updates through Picasa. Here was what we found that concerned us.

Saturday, September 24th

On Saturday, things were looking a bit worse. Dr. Jeng emailed us back after seeing both sets of images.

All right. Sounds like not getting any better. Give me a pharmacy number and I will call in some augmentin tomorrow. Stop duricef and start augmentin. Eat yogurt so you dont get the runs. Updates daily. Are you allergic to anything?

It's difficult to name a doctor that's worked on a weekend with a patient like this -- every day!

He works up in Baltimore. I live in D.C. We're working on a possible infection together using the Internet on the weekend. He's calling in drugs on a Sunday when most surgeons are watching football and relaxing.

Who knows, twenty years ago I might have waited the weekend, maybe longer, before seeing someone -- and by then it would have been much worse.

Oh, and, yes, I have stocked up on yogurt. He was absolutely correct on that one.

Sunday, September 25th

By Sunday I had the new antibiotic. The new pin site management we employed seems to have helped. The doctor's orders to discontinue weight bearing and ankle mobility exercises also helped reduce the stress on the pin sites.

After seeing this series of pictures and notes, Dr. Jeng commented:

From what I can see not too bad. The augmentin should kick in by tomorrow. Not too worried...

Monday, September 26th

Today looked even better. Here was Dr. Jeng's comment this evening:

looks good. cute dog. once pins are quiet lets begin weight bearing and Range of motion again.

I'm super pumped about getting back on my ankle and moving it around again. I forgot how frustrating it is to wear an external fixator without bearing weight or getting a chance to move your foot.

Did I say how awesome Dr. Jeng is?

While we were doing all of this work on Sunday, we threw a surprise going away party for our good friend Alison. We secretly coordinated a massive gathering at our party room and awaited her arrival.

Alison ended up being late, so our first attempt at a surprise was a false alarm. She went downstairs to get some orange juice for what she thought was a girl's brunch.

Here was the real surprised Alison. We totally got her! She had no idea.

We had a great show of support and we're really going to miss having Alison around. She's awesome, and I'm not just saying that because she won the inaugural Injured Tony Award last year.

And finally, thanks for sending the cookies, Mom and Dad! Brooke has hidden them from me, probably in a place I cannot reach. But from what I hear, they are still delicious.