Just Returned from Doctor's Office

I had my doctor's appointment this morning. Instead of seeing The Closer, I saw two of The Closer's Physician Assistants, Kim and Josie. They were extremely nice and very cool. Josie walked in and asked, "so you're the snowboarder?" Yep. I'm that idiot that snowboarded into a tree. Come check out my gross leg!

So how did it go?

Well, it had its good parts and its bad parts. Brooke uses Zipcar and got one of their cars for a few hours. On the way to the appointment, Brooke had to stop short due to some traffic in front of us. This, in turn, caused one of the backseats, the kind that can fold down, to come loose and hit my injured ankle. This, in turn, caused me to scream bloody murder.

It was hilarious.

I was then forced, against my will, to take a 2 mg dilaudid (pain medication). So much for quitting opiates. I shouldn't have screamed like that. Dang it. Later on I was happy I got it. My ankle got manhandled.

I chose to go this time without the wheelchair. I wanted to test my endurance on crutches. I barely made it down my hallway before I died. I'm extremely out of shape! This was my first sign that I may not be ready to return to work.

Once I was called in, my leg was unwrapped. I have to warn you, what you're about to see is exceedingly gross. Of all the pictures we've taken thus far of my leg, I've found these the hardest to look at. I don't know why. Others may think differently. We'll see.

This is Ashley taking my leg splint and dressings off. So far, so good, right? You can see the top incision from my last surgery. It actually looks good. But what about that stuff on the left side of my foot? How about we get closer?

YES! That is gross. As you can see, my ankle is still draining. I've apparently continued to leak gross things out of my ankle.

Yep. Gross leakage.

I no longer have a calf muscle. It's atrophied like crazy.

Here's the right side of my foot. Remember last time, how we were a bit worried about skin necrosis? Well, the good news is I don't have it.

The awesome news is I now have these two giant open wounds instead. Both the PAs and Brooke said it looked great. In fact, Brooke said it is supposed to look like ground beef inside. Well, I guess it does. Delicious!

Here's the final picture. My top incision without any staples. Every single one of them were removed, along with a few stitches.

I've got a video of my staples being removed. It's awesome. As soon as YouTube is done processing it, I'll post it.

So at first, they told us I was going to be thrown in a cast. But after a review of my open wounds, they decided to keep me in a soft splint. I have another appointment next week. I talked to my PAs about returning to work. We all decided I'm still a few weeks away.

Now we get to treat my wounds at home and re-wrap it after I shower. We neglected to tell them how often I currently shower. We might have to increase those coveted showers now.

Leg Update

Yesterday was awesome. I felt great all day. I had slept perfectly that night. I don't know if I've reported this yet or not, but I'm no longer fighting a fever. By reducing the medications I've been taking, both the fever and nightly sweats have been eliminated.

So this is basically my routine. I rest, ice (or bag of peas), compress, and elevate the leg every day and night. It doesn't really change that much. Sometimes I try crutching or wheelchairing out in the hallway for exercise.

Oh! We did just install a new Nerf basketball goal. It's the best!

Here, you can see me about to make another 3-pointer. Guarding me, a little too closely I might add, is my dog, Spunky. I'm using my gimp ankle to hold her off. And, ready for the Alley Oop, is my wife, Brooke. But that's just in case I air ball, which I didn't.

Last night, for some reason, was just awful. Sleep was hard to come by. And this evening was a little brutal with respect to pain. We've been weening myself off of the pain medications, and unfortunately, due to the pain breakthrough, we had to un-ween myself temporarily.

We had some visitors earlier today, and I felt fine while they were here. I don't think it had anything to do with them, though I'd love to blame one of the shorter visitors. By the way, for those of you participating in the visitor competition, updates will be made every Saturday.

While these moments have been happening since the first surgery, they do start to become less frequent and less painful. That's great! I can tell they're getting less frequent. I would like to go a few days, say four or five, without another breakthrough pain day. That would be awesome.

I'm healing, I think. I'm getting better and actually looking forward to getting my staples out. I'm even starting physical therapy on April 2nd.

I'm sure it's going to be extremely painful. I'm really looking forward to it.

During my next doctor's visit on the 23rd, I'm going to ask for permission to drop by work for a few hours just to say hello and get some of the pranks out of the way.

But, like we found out during the last visit, The Closer means business when it comes to my leg. He worked his butt off fixing it, and he doesn't want me to get so impatient that I do something stupid and set myself back months in healing.

He's got a point. But I really want to find out what my new nick name is at work.