These pictures where taken on 02/25, about a month after I broke my ankle, and about 2 weeks after the second surgery. The x-rays were taken right after the surgery, in the OR.
For those of you who haven't heard the story see below:
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During our second ski trip of the year, on our first run of the day, one of my skis came off and I had a close encounter with a tree and some rocks. After I flagged down a ski patrol guy, they wrapped me up and drug me down the mountain. At the first aid station I was advised to take an ambulance to the local hospital (Barton Memorial in South Lake Tahoe). That night they put three pins in my leg and attached an external fixator. This kept my ankle under traction and stable. The swelling and soft tissue damage were too severe to allow them to perform the internal fixation or simply cast the ankle. I was sent home on the third day I was in the hospital. We were told that I would need to wait a week or two for the swelling to go down enough to allow second surgery. We shopped around for an orthopedist. We finally settled on Dr. Morshed from UCSF.
The second surgery went well and now I just had to wait the required three months before I could start bearing weight. It was a long three months. As you might be able to tell from the pictures, the top pin site was not healing well. We finally saw a specialist in wound healing and he decided I needed another surgery to properly close the wound. That was done around early-May. I was able to return to weight bearing mid-May. After that it has just been a process of trying to return to normal.
It's been a slow spring/summer. Mona has been great and incredibly supportive. It would have been infinitely more difficult without her love and care. My parents were also invaluable. They drove all the way out from Kansas to help me for a couple of weeks during the second surgery. Not to mention that they traded their much newer truck for my old neglected one (mine was manual and would have proven difficult to drive with one leg).
09/08/10 C.Kunz