Modified Brostrom (3)

Well it wasn't quite the "Eureka!" moment I'd hoped for. But I am now in my walking cast a.k.a. the moon boot.

The nurse in the plaster room with a BMI of >50 took off my fibreglass cast. One minute - my foot and ankle, indeed up to my midshin was secure in the cast, the next it was nestled safely in her warmth (cleavage? abdominal folds?) as she worked with her electric saw. Then - free! but feeling decidely vulnerable.

Friends had informed me that my lower leg would be: thin like a sparrow's and/or pale like a corpse's and/or scaly like a lizard's and/or withered like a crone's and/or very hairy like a werewolf. Thankfully none of the above was true. It is slightly thinner than the left at the moment with some minor dry skin. Nothing to get too excited about.

The orthopaedic registrar who saw me today was more of a grunter than a talker, but the scar looks very neat and my ankle didn't flop around in the breeze, so I'll forgive his poverty of speech for now. Still gotta keep the crutches for now though, but I am allowed to gradually start to put some weight through my right foot when its in the moon boot.

Modified Brostrom (2)

Last time I did my ankle, 8 years ago, I had private physio for 3 months and was treated a little like a walking wallet. She did however strap my ankle in a weird fashion with flesh coloured tape and thus give me the confidence to still go scuba-diving in the Egypt. In fact a week of finning around the Red Sea seemed to achieve more than she ever did and 2 or 3 months later things appeared to be back to normal until...

This time. I decided to go with a private orthopaedic opinion as I had another scuba trip I had to check I was going to be fit for, this time to the Great Barrier Reef. The modern waiting room, smart 3 piece suit, natty brogues and carefully matched shirt and tie all inspired confidence but made me consider that I was paying a little too much for this appointment. It was decreed that I would be fit for my scuba trip, road cycling was unlikely to make things much worse, but I did need an MR Arthrogram. I decided my pockets weren't deep enough for a private scan and booked my liveaboard dive trip instead, knowing with a degree of confidence that my NHS scan would take place some time well after I returned from Australia.

In August, the radiologist said my ankle would feel "funny" and when he learnt I was medical, he was certain that I'd want to see the contrast injected into my ankle. He was wrong on both counts: when he injected the additional 8ml of fluid into the ankle that already contained its usual 2ml of synovial fluid it didn't feel funny- it felt like I'd just injured it all over again. The fact I was was watching this on a TV monitor as it happened wasn't interesting, it was nauseating. To add insult to "injury" the staff in the MRI room misheard me and I was subjected to half an hour of earspliting 50s music in a vain attempt to drown out the VERY NOISY scanner as they scanned me every 5 minutes to see where the fluid was leaking from.

I had ruptured my CFL and torn my ATFL, and was listed for an arthroscopy and EUA as a warm-up for a bigger definative op that the surgeon was almost certain I'd need. The "warm-up" anaethesia went well and I can just about remember telling the recovery nurse that I had a "big doggie." Results: Yup, the joint was very unstable and yup, I was starting to get mild arthritis from it slipping about all the time despite my best efforts to compensate. I liked to imagine that when I was anaesthetised my foot was like a freshly landed wild salmon, flopping about and hard to get a good hold of because of my desperately unstable ankle - those anaethesia drugs always give me full-on dreams.

So I was listed for a modified Brostrom's lateral ankle reconstruction and finally had this just after New Year 2010. This all seemed to go smoothly and apparently I'm likely to be back to premiership foootball in 6 months. Post-op recovery was initially swift, out of hospital within 48 hours. I had the initial recuperation period with Paul and Fi as Mrs Doubleu was in Pittsburgh and neither Max nor Jeff was deemed responsible enough to look after me. Jeff dog was boarded out with Anne, and Max left with a suitably large pile of food. I was very well looked after: my nails were painted by Freya and my lego skills encouraged by Dylan. The fact I was immobile and therefore a "captive playmate" all the better as far as they were concerned.

There followed 6 weeks of complete non-weight bearing on my right foot. So I've really just about had it with crutches.

Seriously, I go back to clinic this morning and I'm expecting to get the cast off, be fitted with a walking cast. I'm hoping to throw away my crutches in what I'm imagining will be a scene of almost biblical fervour, hallelujah and salvation.

To be continued...

Modified Brostrom (1)

I've just about had it with crutches.

Don't ever take your ankles for granted. Seriously, you rely on them more than you realise: walking, running, cycling, swimming, climbing, and snowboarding. Believe me, even taking a cup of tea from one room to another is a major undertaking on axilla crutches (tip: flask and backpack).

No doubt many of you are aware of the ongoing saga of my right ankle. Sprained often in childhood, once badly playing squash 8 years ago, and then properly knackered in November 2008 on a midweek Beamish Oddsox mountain bike night-ride.

Instant nausea at the time of the injury (embarrassingly but luckily only 200m into the ride) gave me a clue this was a more substantial injury. After a couple of hours of rest, ice, and elevation, I struggled to remove the mud-caked gore-tex sock. And as soon as I did, my ankle visibly swelled to the size of a melon in front of my eyes. "Yikes!" I thought.

Mrs Doubleu was preparing a presentation for work the following morning and thus not best pleased at my request for a lift to A&E. Needless to say, said A&E was full of Mrs Doubleu's least favourite patient demographic: drunken, vomiting, teenage girls. Despite the retching, Mrs Doubleu admirably soldiered on, preparing her talk on her laptop at a safe distance from the spew, whilst I had X-rays and painkillers.

The X-rays showed "no bony abnormality." I couldn't believe this, given the pain and swelling, so I asked the casualty junior if he could have my films checked by the registrar on duty as I was "a GP and everything". Now in all likelihood, he went for a cup of coffee, then came back and told me they'd been checked and were fine, but hey, I felt better about it all.

So when it didn't settle down, I had physio. I had a week's boarding in Whistler to get through. It did seem perverse though, to be icing the bastard after a morning in the snow. But the thing just didn't settle, no matter how much I tried to convince myself it was slowly getting better. It plateaued by May, by which time I could cycle on the road and pay for it with a day of swelling. Running, climbing, boarding and mountain biking had much steeper payments.

To be continued...