Changes and Surprises

You might notice a couple of changes on my blog. I decided I needed a better description. I want people to be able to find me if they are searching for ankle blogs. The other big change is that I had to edit my surgery on August 12th. I went for my first post-op appointment this week and found that I had a much bigger surgery than I originally thought! When Dr. McGorgeous went in, he found that my lateral talocalcaneal ligament was lax and I had an osteochondral fracture on the underside of my talus. Ok, picture it like this. You have two blocks. One on top of the other. The bottom block is your heel, your calcaneus. The top block is your ankle, your talus. Normally, a ligament holds them every so slightly apart. My ligament was torn, so nothing was holding them apart, and with every step my ankle bone was grinding into my heel bone. The ligament has been torn since the beginning, January 13th of 2009. I'm not sure if the fracture happened at that time also, or if it formed over time from the constant grinding. Regardless, they are now repaired. My feelings on this range from sheer gloating (Ha! I TOLD you it felt unstable!) to joy (maybe this was the last surgery!) to anger (why the hell didn't we find this sooner?!) to panic (how the hell am I going to find time to rehab this??) to fear (maybe this wasn't the last surgery). I'm all over the place. At any given moment I am any combination of these feelings. Physically, I'm still really tired. I'm trying to take is easy, but in reality, I'm not. Between work and school I'm putting in 12 hour days. Not anything to write home about when you're healthy, but when you're 10 days out from major surgery, it's not ideal. What else? Oh, I'm in my boot. And it's hot. And heavy. In August. Whine. I'm still in pain, but I'm trying very hard not to panic about it. After all, I still have my stitches in. If it's not even healed enough to take out threads, it's probably not healed enough to stop hurting, right? RIGHT!?!??!??! So, what's next for me? Well, today involves an afternoon of elevating my ankle. Possibly a pain pill. Next week is getting the sutures out. Week after that, physical therapy starts again. Here we go!