Congratulations Brooke and Crystal ICE!

Way to dominate, ladies!
Philadelphia was a blast. It was our first time there. I felt like I too ran a marathon with all of the crutching I did in that city. Thanks to our good friend John for hosting!

Chicken Fried Bacon

They have chicken fried Bacon in Philadelphia.

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Physical Therapy

Yesterday's physical therapy went great. It's located just a few blocks from George Washington University Hospital. My physical therapist is Kim Stepien. We mostly talked about the injury and took measurements of my strength and flexibility. It was a lot of fun explaining the last nine months to her.

The dorsiflexion situation, unsurprisingly, is terrible. My foot is currently stuck at 90 degrees when I try to move it up. You need about 10 to 15 degrees past 90 to walk normally.

My right butt cheek has atrophied pretty bad, so I've been given a few exercises to improve my butt strength. I'm not sure how Kim could tell. By sight? It was probably from the strength tests, but it would be amusing if her assessment was by sight.

I've added quads and hamstring to my workouts in the gym. I might have gone slightly overboard on my ankle today. At the moment, I cannot bear any weight on my foot without copious amounts of pain.

I asked Kim about the popping sounds coming from inside the joint. She said it was actually a good sign. It shows that there is some moderate movement in the joint. I also asked her about some of the pain I'm having, and she said all of the foot pain is good pain.

The next appointment is tomorrow morning and then we're off to Philadelphia for Brooke's marathon this weekend. As a Redskins fan, I'm ashamed to go to this city after what Vick did to us Monday night. I think I'm obligated to wear my Portis jersey, but there's a good chance an unruly Philadelphia fan will punch me in the face. We'll see.

Hilarious Ankle Pain

The ankle and foot pain has been bothering me quite a bit when I move it. I've started to take some of my prescription pain medication at night to help me while I try to rehab my ankle myself, but I only have a few pills left and they're probably too strong. I was hoping use up the rest of my prescription while I went to physical therapy, but it looks like I'll need to contact the doctor's office tomorrow to see what we should do. I'm looking forward to and dreading physical therapy.

I think most of the pain I'm experiencing is "good" pain. I don't have any throbbing pain in my tibia and my fibula pain is very slight. The ankle joint is very rigid and painful. When I stretch it out, I get about 6 or 7 loud pops. Fortunately, I can bear weight relatively pain free if I don't move. Once I get into a walking motion, the pain gets pretty intense.

Now I'll stop whining about my ankle and tell you about the sweet measurements we just did. We took a tape measure to my calves and my bicep. The left calf was 16 inches in diameter. My right bicep is 14. My right calf was 12. Awesome!

The two large holes are healing nicely. It's amazing what a few showers will do for the condition of my skin.

I decided to take a quick video of my flexibility so I could have something for comparison later on in my recovery. Not a whole lot going on yet.

Gross

Today was time to remove the final bandage and reveal the two puncture wounds in my shin. I'll admit, this grossed me out.

I bled quite a bit from these wounds.

The weird thing about puncture wounds is that the heal from the inside out. There's no noticeable scab on top of the holes.

My skin is in great condition.

The skin is so soft, so smooth. I need to sign up for an Aveda ad, or maybe join their institute.

One Red Foot and One Subaru

Today really made me miss how comfortable and effortless it used to be to walk. Since it was my first day back at work, I walked around a lot more than I had at home Wednesday and Thursday. This second attempt at walking for the first time in months is definitely more difficult than the first try earlier this Summer.

My subtalar joint (between the calcaneus and talus) is killing me. This joint was really stiff before the third surgery. Now it feels like my calcaneus bone has been replaced by a set of Cutco Knives. Sorry for the obscure reference, but I almost got fooled by this scam when I was in high school. When they told me I'd have to buy my own knives to sell to people, I realized these people were preying on my stupidity -- something I have in abundance. But man, those knives could cut through a penny, then a rope, then a shoe, and then a tomato!

In comparison, my ankle joint hasn't started to bother me yet. I guess that's a good sign, but I'm sure in a few days I'll be complaining about that, too.

While a doctor may look at my ankle and say there are good things happening here, I look at my ankle and say that there is little right with it. In this picture you can see how the width of my right foot is much smaller than my left foot. It's difficult to see from this picture, but my right foot has a much higher arch. All of the tendons, the connective tissues around the joints, the muscles -- everything is insanely tight. Plus, on top of all of this, I have several puncture wounds to walk on.

I know that after a few weeks of pain my ankle will be in better shape. It would be great to Tivo this part and fast forward through it.

I start physical therapy Wednesday at a new facility, the Center for Orthopedic Rehab and Exercise. While I enjoyed going to Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation Clinic, I had a few concerns going back, so I'm going to try out a new place. We'll see how it goes.

I decided today to pass on attempting to return to snowboarding by Spring 2011. It's more important that I allow my ankle to heal completely before rushing back into the sport that took away most of my 2010.

However, nothing is stopping me from taking a Subaru off of a sweet jump, like this guy did back in 2007. Please, do not tell Brooke. She could actually stop me from doing this. Yes, she no longer reads the blog. She gets enough of my ankle without having to read about it.

There's a sweet video off of that link. I'm surprised none of the snowboarders from that film ended up in two external fixators.

Like A Boss!

Put it in full screen and HD mode to make it seem like you were there.
Thank you, Dr. Buchanan, for making this quick and as painless as possible. I especially appreciated that you left the drill out of the room until it was needed. Nice work.
So how does it feel to have pins pulled and drilled out of your bones? The skinny pins didn't hurt at all. I had hit the external fixator on enough objects over the last three months to make them extremely loose.
However, removing the two threaded pins hurt, especially after they were removed. It still hurts just a bit even a day later.
I'm extremely pleased with opting out of surgery. We would have waited in the hospital for hours for a 5 minute procedure. Then we would have stayed in the hospital for several more hours while I recovered from the anesthetic. This was a much better option.