Cat Scan Video

I was able to create a video of the horizontal scan from earlier this morning. You can see the interference caused by the metal plate and screws in my fibula. Those mysterious orbs floating outside my leg are the two titanium bars for the external fixator.

Ankle Update

We had our second appointment with The Closer early this morning. He said he'd like to do the second surgery early next week. We've scheduled it at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA for Tuesday, March 2nd.

Both our nurse, Ashley, and Dr. Buchanan said the foot was healing up nicely. They also both said they thought of my ankle when they saw someone wipe out hard at the Winter Olympics. I have a CT scan scheduled for this Thursday in preparation for the surgery. He ordered a 3-dimensional reconstruction! Hopefully I'll get to post those up here.

I'm also now back on Lyrica to help with some of the neuropathic pain I've been having. If you've never had this kind of pain, it's annoying. Randomly, the tips of my toes, or my heel, or the soul of my foot will starting hurting. I don't even have feeling on the soul of my foot.

Now on to the pictures! Warning: it's still gross.

Here's a really good picture Brooke took of my external fixator. You can see how my ankle is still deformed from all of the tibia fragments. I've also developed quite a nice bruise up my entire leg. It still freaks me out to think that bar goes through my heel.

My incision site is, apparently, healing up well. It looks like a chainsaw wound to me. That ankle is still huge!

Here's what's left of the fracture blister. I learned in bad fractures, blisters can form on the skin and fill with clear fluid. In really bad fractures, those blisters fill with blood. I got the latter kind.

Here's a close up of the pin sites on my shin. Yep. Still disgusting.

The plan is to screw back together all of the large pieces of my tibia, secure it with another plate, and remove the millions of small fragments. The hope is the bone will heal back together and replace all of those missing pieces. This is a much better solution now than to have a total ankle replacement. It's always good to wait as long as possible for technology to improve before getting a prosthetic joint.

At some point, they'll throw on a cast after surgery. I imagine they'll wait a few days to monitor the swelling for compartment syndrome. I should return to a somewhat normal life next month!

I hope I get to keep the external fixator.

Cat Scans of the Ankle

Here's a link to the CT scans they took of my leg in the emergency room at St. Anthony's Summit Medical Center just before my first surgery.

While I'm not trained in reading these things, I can see why my leg hurts. Notice how my right leg was almost two inches shorter than my left leg! My talus bone is about an inch up inside where my fibula and tibia should be. How awesome is that?

Here's an image of the cleanly broken fibula. That felt amazing when it happened.

This is what's left of my distal tibia (lower tibia). This is what's to be repaired during the next surgery. I'm really interested in seeing what they do. There's two million pieces in there. How will they put them all back together?

Pictures of The Strongest Ankle Known to Man

Warning: the following images may be too gruesome for some of you. For others, this is probably the only reason you're here.

These are pictures of my right leg while I was receiving a new dressing on February 15th, two days after my first surgery. The minute we saw what was hiding underneath, Brooke leaped for a camera and grabbed some amazing photos. I also threw in some post-op x-rays for kicks.

In this image you can start to see the two metal titanium bars holding my leg together. The marking on my foot is where the nurses were able to get a reliable pulse.

Check out that hematoma (blood blister)! Apparently, this is a common occurrence with ankle fractures. This dude was huge! You can also see one of the nurses in the background doing the redress. I think her body language is saying, "this patient is loud and annoying."

Here you can see the incision site where they placed a semi-tubular plate to fix my fractured fibula. Since this bone was cleanly broken all the way through, it was the easiest to fix. They used eight screws to secure the plate. On my way into surgery, I may or may not have asked my doctor that I get the plate engraved with the words, "Big Rig."

Here's a good view of the external fixators holding my leg together. I have three pins screwed into my leg. One long threaded pin through my calcaneous bone (the heel bone) and two on the upper part of my tibia. This leaves four external sites to clamp down two titanium bars on the lateral and medial sides of my leg. This gives me the length of my foot back and holds the remaining broken mash of bones in place.

A fun quote from my Operative Procedure Report reads, "the distal-most proximal pin could not be placed into the back cortex, either by hand or by drill, due to the density" of the bone. This means I have super-human bone strength. I could probably punch through cement walls if I wanted.

Another line from the report says, "pre-drilling at a slow speed," was used to "avoid burning the bone." Thanks, guys!

Here's a close up of my blood blister. This was taken on February 15th. It grew quite a bit when we looked at it again four days later. Unfortunately, my new doctor in DC decided to drain it. I was hoping we could let it grow to about the same size of my head.

While we're on this picture, I guess I should mention I have nerve damage. The trauma to two nerves in my foot prevents me from feeling most sensations in my big toe and the bottom of my foot. This was due in part to the injury and in part to the titanium bars stretching my leg so tightly. We're hopeful the nerves will heal on their own and return some feeling. No worries, though. I can still walk if the feeling doesn't come back.

Here's a post-operation x-ray of my fixed fibula. You can see the staples used on the incision site. That's going to be an awesome scar! You can also barely make out the eight screws. The one at the bottom is difficult to see.

Here's a different angle on the plate and screws on the fibula. You can also see the fun times happening in the distal tibia just above.