An Expectant Night

March 25, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

To say that I was stressed out the night before the doctor’s appointment is an understatement.  I was sitting on the recliner sunday night and I stared at my booted foot and said, “I’ll do my best to prevent them from cutting you up, if you get busy and heal up fast, okay? Deal?”

I’d like to say that my foot twitched in agreement.  Or it might have just been a twitch.

I crutched on out of my house that night.  It was one of those typical Bishop nights.  Clear, starry skies, a fat moon hanging low over the mountains and cool dry air.

I took a few pictures, then started crutching back home.  I was tired and wanted to sleep.  I wanted to have a tangible resolution.  Surgery, or no surgery?  How many weeks before I could walk again?

I woke up early in the morning, did some work, then giving myself adequate time, I pulled together my keys, phone and sunglasses and started crutching the three blocks to the hospital.  I guess you could say I’m really fortunate to live so close by, so I don’t need to try to find someone to give me a ride.

I suppose I could… but I didn’t want to sit on my ass for six weeks.  I need to get some excercise.  And boy, I’ll tell you, crutching three blocks is a good workout.

Arriving at the orthopedic’s office, a nurse saw me first, explained that they’d be cutting off my bandages and taking another look at my foot.  Some of you may remember the rather nasty picture of my foot I posted last week. Now I was curious how much better (or worse) it’d look, three days later.

Another new development with my foot was that my entire leg below the knee had turned yellow, and there was a huge purple bruise spreading all the way from my ankle to my knee.  I pointed that out to the nurse and she said that was probably normal and not to be concerned about.

So, off the bandages came. And here’s what my foot looked like (a bit less gross).  The fracture blisters were all gone, slightly less bruising and less swollen.  Definitely an improvement after three days!

The orthopedic doctor came in and put up the film from the CT scan.  I initially saw the white outlines and thought, “Shit, my heel bone is really fucked up.”

But after the doctor explained a bit more, I realized that this was a horizional cross scan of my foot (as if you were looking at it from the top), and those white outlines are actually the bone structure going vertically up and down, and disappearing off the field of view.   So it should not be considered the actual outline of my heel bone.

The REAL fracture (two actually) is that dark gap running through the bottom right part.   The doctor drew arrows to indicate where the bone normally should be.

So rather than my heel bone  being a good half inch out of whack, the piece is actually about 1-2 mm out of place.

The doctor then said the words I’d been waiting for a whole week.  “Surgery will not be necessary.”  I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  He added that surgery could be done to reduce the fracture and restore normal heel structure.  I asked him about possible long term problems if I didn’t go with surgery.  He said my heel would be slightly wider.. might have problems fitting some shoes (like climbing shoes, ha ha..) - but he didn’t foresee any major problems.

I told him I’d skip surgery.  He made no argument, so that further confirmed to me that in the doctor’s mind, he didn’t think it was necessary.

We then discussed the healing process.  I’ll need to come back in three weeks from now to have another set of x-rays made.  This will be to confirm that the pieces have not unexpectedly moved, or are not healing properly.   If the x-rays reveal nothing wrong, then it will be another three weeks of healing, before I can start walking again.

So, that puts me at May 5th when I hopefully will be able to start walking again!

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