Leg Update, 18 Months
Just about 18 months ago, I broke my leg in three places in a simple fall in the mountains. As the incident gets further away, and I can take the experience for what it was – a weird accident and a chance to learn a few things about myself – I still look down at it and think of it as a sort of an alien. As if that leg somehow doesn’t belong to me anymore.
I know part of it is because of the continued numbness, which will likely never go away, and the weird way it feels when it suddenly decides to have some sort of feeling. There are days when it feels like a marshmallow; it can’t support me or doesn’t feel like it can. There are days when it just decides that in needs to ache and creak and buckle, and days when it feels like the giant screws in the bottom of my tibia are trying to work themselves back out. There are days when it acts like the ankle I knew for the first 51 1/2 years of its life. Weather doesn’t seem to affect it, and I never know from one day to the next how it will behave or feel. When I get out of bed in the morning, it is completely stiff, the ankle unwilling to bend even the slightest bit. By the time I get to the bathroom, it is moving, but not stable. By the time I get back to the bedroom to get dressed, it feels fine.
But I still walk on it, hike on it, ride a bike with it, and dance those Zumba dance moves with it. I climb stairs and go down stairs, mostly foot over foot, and I am able to use the foot to work a shovel. I can mow the grass in our bumpy yard, although the ankle is not so happy when I do. There are things I still can’t do, most notably stand on tip-toe. I can point my toes, stretching the ankle completely out, but cannot do the tip-toe thing. This makes it a bit hard to reach things on the top shelf. I still can’t wear shoes with any kind of heel. The right foot is definitely fatter than the left foot, which is a problem when I’m trying to wear something other than tennis shoes or flip flops. There are days when it is pretty fat, and days when it looks pretty normal. I can walk, balance, and lean on the foot, as long as I don’t twist it or try to lift up on the balls of my feet. The pain with that kind of move comes on slowly, but hits a high note that takes a long time to go away, as if someone is twisting my tibia by its ends like a dishrag.
And it still looks funky. I am prone to spider veins anyway, and the area below the tibia break is laced through with them now. The divot from the fracture blister has filled in somewhat, but you can still see it, along with the strangely shiny and wrinkled scar. When I pull my toes up, contracting my ankle fully, I have extra skin the puffs out over the top of my shoes. It’s quite attractive. When I put the ankles side by side, they don’t match at all, and likely never will again. This is my new “normal.”
My surgeon was amazing. I know I would not be walking, hiking, biking and doing Zumba without his most excellent skills. My husband is about to see him for his blown-out knee. I’m sure he’ll be in good hands. I also know that I was also responsible for my recovery. I did what I was told (no weight on that leg until he said so, which ended up being just shy of 7 weeks), and I ate very well during those months of recovery (lots of calcium, veggies, and lean protein). When I broke it, I wasn’t sure it could be repaired. Even though I didn’t know the extent of my injury, I knew it was bad. It wasn’t until I was home that I got to see the xrays showing the break, and the xrays showing the hardware that now held my tibia and fibula together. It was much worse than my mind had let me believe.
Yet here I am, walking, hiking, biking, dancing my butt off at Zumba. I am very very grateful, and very very blessed.
The spider veins…it’s a whole network in there! You can also see the surgical scar, and what’s left of the blister scarring above.
Outside of the ankle. You can clearly see the scar.
Ankle comparison…that right one (left side of the picture) is all bumpy and lumpy!
