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Hooray!! I got my stitches out this week… and now I have a bitchin’ scar. Chicks dig scars, right?

So, I’m hopefully nearing the end of my broken ankle saga, started nearly three months ago… The doctors all say that I’m healing up great, and with each day, my ankle gains a little more flexibility and a little more strength. It’s kind of cool feeling it get better with each day. Although I’m going to visit the physical therapist on Wednesday for a consult, the doctor says that with each step I take, it’s like self-therapy, so.. the more steps I take, the better I’ll get. But, I do want to get back into playing baseball, riding bikes, dancing crazily, and everything, so.. I figure a PT consult can’t hurt. Also, I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on the InterWeb, and I’ve kept the best broken ankle links I’ve found at my del.ico.us..

So.. I’ve had three months now to sit on my arse and get nice and fat… so I’m super excited to get back out and run around again. Wahoo!

Thanks to my doctors, and thanks to everyone who has been super nice and supportive to me and my gimpy ankle for these past few months!

I got the big screw removed from my ankle this morning (the remaining 5 screws and plate stay in there, unless they bother me).. Wahoo! It was a fairly simple procedure with just local anesthetic (which was the most unpleasant part, actually).. The doctor made a small cut in my ankle, and then using a screwdriver, unscrewed the big screw from my ankle.. Eeek! Well.. at least I got to keep the screw…

Doctor Mike used a Fluoroscope during the procedure so that he could see exactly what he was doing, and then afterwards, he showed me my ankle on the screen.. LIVE! Man, it’s sooo cool to see your ankle moving around all x-ray-like on the live screen…

So.. it’s almost 2 months since I broke my ankle, and I’m progressing really well… I can’t get wait to start working out again and getting everything back up to strength. My left leg is noticeably smaller than the right now, but, with each day, it definitely feels stronger…

Wahoo!! The cast is off!

It’s been a little over six weeks since I broke my ankle that fated day back in April, and finally… the cast is off of my foot. I’ve been getting better and better throughout the past few weeks on the cast, and for the past two weeks I’ve been able to walk on it slowly with the aid of a cane. When I switched from the crutches (no hands free) to the cane (1 hand free), it was amazing the amount of stuff I could then do more easily. Being able to carry stuff around for myself (like getting myself a glass of milk from the fridge) is a simple pleasure that you don’t really miss until you can’t do it for yourself..

As expected, the skin underneath the cast is kinda gross, I’ll spare you the pics, but I asked the nurses and they all said that they’ve seen much worse. Eew. Since I still have a big screw that spans the fibula and tibula, I have a big black walking boot that I have to use until they take that screw out in a few weeks (which means a few more weeks of sympathy and use of my handicapped parking placard).. Woohoo! I can’t wait scrub my foot squeeky clean.

But the doc says I’m healing up just perfectly, so I’m quite happy with that… I took a look at the xrays, and everything seems to look ok to me, like all the puzzle pieces seem to fit together nicely.. My friend Aveh from high school was here visiting me this weekend, and he told me that in orthopedics, if everything looks ok, it generally is… (he’s a doctor). So, I’m gonna take his word for it. Woo! Doc says I can basically get back to activity after 3 months… so, I guess that’d be July 9th… Hmm.. We’re planning a backpacking trip to the Lost Coast for July 4th — I wonder if I’ll be able to do that…

It’s been 16 days since I broke my ankle now… here’s what’s been goin on, I’m sure you’ve been wondering. The ankle is still painful if it’s not elevated, but nearly not at much pain as before.. I’m down to my last percocet, which is a little sad… waah. It was nice while it lasted, but I guess I’m just supposed to use ibuprofen now if it hurts, which is not nearly as nice.

I finally got to see an xray of that they did to my ankle.. Wow. Frankly, I had no idea that there was that much hardware in my ankle. I was picturing maybe a pin or two.. but there are like six screws (including one huge one that goes all the way across) and one plate. Wowsers. That big screw is just stabilizing the whole thing, so that will come out in a few months. I imagine that’s not gonna tickle.

I got the soft cast off today, the one that they put on after the surgery. It was weird to see my foot (I have a picture of it, but I’ve not posted it, cuz it’s kinda yuck). My foot was slightly swollen, and the incision is quite a nice one, about four inches tall right on the side of my ankle. The wound was stapled shut, and they removed the staples today — that was quite unpleasant. Ouch.

And they put on a proper hard cast, so now I’m ready for people to come and sign it. Maybe I’ll paint something nice on there since I’m gonna have this for the next month or so… The whole time the cast was being put on, I was thinking to myself.. “Oh Jeez.. is this how I want my foot to be for the next month?? Hmm.. wait, no.. maybe a little to the left.. Oh man, it’s setting… umm… hmm.. it’s set? oh. well, I guess that’s it.” Yah, so I hope this is where I want my foot to be since that’s where it’s gonna be for awhile. The doc gave me a walking cast, so at least I’ll be able to hobble around without crutches as soon as I get used to it. Granted, my cast leg is gonna be effectively longer than my other leg, so I’ll either a need big platform shoe to even it out, or I’ll just walk all uneven and stuff.

But.. all being said and done, the doc says that I’m healing up quite nicely and he expects that I’ll have a fully working ankle that I can run on and do everything that I need to do on it.. Wahoo.

Wooohoo.. so it’s been three days that I’ve been dealing with this broken ankle now. I can’t believe it’s only been three days, it honestly feels like forever. I’m learning how to do things all over again, since apparently this world isn’t really designed for people with one leg and two arms operating crutches. Simple things like.. um, carrying things. My friend Alex told me that her sister had devised a “magic basket” filled with everything that she needed as she hobbled around during her period of one-footedness. In it were her medication, water, chapstick, and a phone.

So, I’ve turned my circa 1999 manpurse into my magic basket… And, as a bonus, I found my chinese chop, which was lost for the past year!! I remember exactly how I lost it last year… I kept the chop at my office at CNET, and when I was moving my stuff out, I wanted to make sure to put it somewhere “safe” since it was really important to me not to lose it. So, in the manbag it went… and there it stayed for the past year. ha. It’s crazy how it’s impossible to find stuff when you’re actually looking for it.

Anyway… Percocet has been a fantastic help in dealing with the pain. It’s much nicer than Vicodin, I think… I find that Percocet seems to just deal with the pain in my ankle, whereas Vicodin seems to dull *everything*. I mean, yes, Percocet also makes you kind of dizzy and happy all over, but it doesn’t seem as dumbing as Vicodin. But yah.. Percocet is good stuff man. I can totally see why this is like schedule 2 narcotics. Wee.

So… yesterday I played in our third baseball game, a scrimmage with the Grizzlies.. In my first at-bat, I walked, and was then batted over to second on a fielder’s choice (avoiding the double play, I slid hard into second). So far so good.

I took a good sized lead-off from second, saw the catcher bobble a pitch, and I took off towards third. I saw out of the corner of my eye that the catcher had quickly gotten control of the ball so there was gonna be a play at the bag, so I ran hard, and slid hard into third base, just under the tag..

Then I heard a disgusting CRUNCH. Uh oh. Not good. I look down, pick up my leg, and my foot is hanging kind of down and to the left — I get that sinking feeling in my stomach that I’ve just done something really bad to myself. Crap. It didn’t really hurt that much though. It was just the sound and the realization that you’ve done something really bad to yourself that was the sucky part.

So my teammate Bruce drives me over to the hospital, where I’m hoping that I’ve only just sprained my ankle. We go into the ER, which is empty and everyone seems incredibly calm and relaxed — I guess real world ERs aren’t crazy and dramatic places like they are on TV. Like, nobody really seemed to be in a rush like they seem like on TV, but maybe that’s a good thing. They were calm and friendly and just kind of progressed about their tasks like it was their everyday job. Oh wait, it IS their everyday job. I suppose if they ran around like crazy people like they do on TV they’d go crazy and stick themselves with needles in all of the panic and stuff. And I suppose the calm ER doesn’t make for good television.

Anyway, the ankle is swelling up quite a bit, which is a bad sign, but when the doctor takes an initial look, she doesn’t seem to feel anything broken… good good.. there’s hope. I’m in good spirits and take a pic of my swollen ankle (it looks really gross, so don’t click over unless you’re cool with that).

But, we need to be sure, so off to the xray I go…

Yah.. so, I guess that’s not how a healthy ankle should look. I hear mumblings that it’s maybe just dislocated, and that makes me happy.. and then I hear that the emergency room doctor needs to get a second opinion. Uh oh.

And then two doctors come into my room with somber looks on their faces. My heart sinks.

“Yes, it’s broken.”

Crap. And, there’s more — I need to go in today to get surgery to put pins and screws into my ankle so that it’s sufficiently stablized during the healing process. Hooray. Oh, and my ankle was still dislocated, so they needed to pop it back into place. The nice doctor asks me if I’d like some drugs for the pain while they pop it back, and at that point, I’m like hells yah I want some drugs… So, the friendly nurse pushes in the happy drugs.. Weeeeee. I don’t really remember what really happened next, except the room looked really wobbly and the doctor said to relax so I did. My body felt like jello. Ooopy goopey jello. Wee. Where am I?

I kind of come to and there’s a cast around my ankle now, which is getting really hot from the plaster setting. The warmth feels nice around my poor ankle, and the happy drugs are starting to wear off, so the pain is coming back. Not so good.

So yah.. now I’m resting at home (hooray Percocet!) before I head back into the hospital for the surgery.

Yah.. so that was my Sunday.. Woo.. Apparently Coco Crisp also broke a bone while stealing third base yesterday. He broke his left ring finger but apparently he’s still gonna play in the season home opener. Yah, there’s no need for me to play on this broken ankle, and luckily I can still work (thank goodness the commute isn’t that bad). Granted, living in a 3-story place isn’t the most ideal of situations, but I have been thinking about getting a mini fridge for my room for awhile…

So.. no more dancing for me for a few months. Looks like I’ll have to be like Lisa from Saved by the Bell and just dance “The Sprain“. I really just hope I didn’t do anything permanently bad to myself. Apparently I’m 30 now and not “young” anymore or something.