broken tib/fib, some peroneus nerve damage...

[gergberg]

Its October, I broke my leg in Feb, and I finally got a pleasant diagnosis. Time to write up my experiences, I guess. And thanks for all the great TRs and gear info that really helped me throhgh those months. Sorry for my shitty English, especially when I am at a loss for the medically appropriate expressions.

1. how to break a leg:
We found this nice cornice(~15ft just the cornice) to do some tricks off. On my third 3 I went a little bit bigger than expected, lost control in the air, overrotated and still tried to slow down the rotation and stomp it. Bad idea, I guess I should have just let it go and slam on my back into a couple of feet of pow. Instead I ended up landing still at a slight angle, with my weight a little forward and basically only on my left leg.Booom. Before I even got to a complete stop I knew my leg was broken. I have never had a fracture before, but I guess you just know your leg is done when you try to lift it a little and the bottom part just stays where it is.I got drugged and flown to the nearest hospital.

2. in the hospital:
Diagnosis: fractured tib/fib(no compound fracture, no shattered tib or fib and no damage done to the knee) inside the ski boot. Thats strange everyone said, it should be at the upper end of the boot. Thanks, good to know where my leg should have snapped, assholes. The leg was rapidly swelling up, so the surgeons considered installing a fixator first until the leg wasnt that fat anymore, but instead put in the metal plate(fib) and metal rod (ETN tibia nail) and screws right away since they thought it would still work. I was happy I didnt have to deal with all the metal sticking out of my body.

Surgery went well everyone told me. I should be out of the hospital within 5 days. Well ... I spent about 2+ weeks there as the swelling didnt stop until about day 5 when it finally subsided due to some massaging and after getting a compression bandage (???if that is the correct medical term). Until then I got checked (a nice fat metal needle stabbed into the calf 3 times) for compartment syndrome twice, but fortunately the pressure in my leg wasnt really close to the critical value. But due to the swelling (probably) my peroneus nerve got damaged which resulted in not being able to lift my left foot and toes, especially the big toe. That seems to be pretty common when having a tib/fib fracture. After some more needle poking (this time a little bit thinner) and electic shocks the neurology guy said, it looked like the nerve most probably wasnt severed and it would be back to 100% in around a year.I was released from the hospital with crutches, and almost non weight baring (10kg~22lbs max).

Later I found out that the fracture and surgery werent quite as smooth as the surgeons firs told me: No shattered bone, but they did have to remove some small bone fragments and due to whatever reason (maybe the substanial swelling or the fact that it was Sunday evening)the gap between the two pieces of my tib were relatively far apart from each other and slightly crooked(gap on the backside~2mm, on the front ~9mm).

Read on for the recovery. Need to check soccer results first, before I write the next paragraph.

[gergberg]

3. out of the hospital:

Not too much pain except for the compression sock pissing me off. 2 weeks out the hospital, back to the hospital, this time for a perforated appendix.
Now, the days after appendectomy, THAT was the worst fukcing pain I have ever felt. Breaking the leg was just a sickening feeling cause I could feel one piece of leg moving and the lower part not moving at the same time. I could actually put the leg back together kind of like lego and then take it apart and rearrange the angle of my foot with respect to my knee.Back to the topic of this thread though.
Check up for the leg around 6 weeks after surgery: fibula is healing nicely, I couldnt see anything not normal on the X-rays except the metal plate thing. Tibia was a whole different story. Nothing had happened. The doc said,no reason to panic, it was a severe fracture(look, now they are telling me whats really going on!!) and might take a little longer(obviously since it is way more volume and thus bone mass to rebuild than the fib), plus my extra week in hospital for appendectomy definitely hasnt helped to speed up the healing of my leg. In order to get a little more pressure on the bone pieces (they dont grow back without at least some) the head surgeon decided to take out one of the 2 proximal screws(near the knee) that affixes the metal nail to the tibia,(not done in general anaesthetic, just took 5 minutes "like drawing blood" is what the surgeon said.Well, not quite the same IMO). This was going to give the bone a couple of mm of movement against the nail(hope you get what I mean:nail stays fixed and bone can kind of slide over the nail up to 2mm ).

That didnt really do the job, although starting a few weeks later I started to feel some light pain around the fracture area for the first time and 6 weeks after the dynamization of the nail callous started to form. Not really a lot and extremely slow. So, the second proximal screw was taken out. Now the only thing keeping the nail in place and fixed to the tibia were the two distal screws (above the ankle). This kind of made for some disgusting extra pain inside the knee due to the metal nail poking at the inside of my knee whenever putting pressure on my left leg. I got accustomed to it within a week though. Longterm effects are probably that (as I can feel when doing rehab or cardiotraining) it will continue to rub against the tendon from kneecap to the tibia and irritate it until I get the metal out (should be 1.5 years after the accident).

Nevertheless, a week ago I had a check up and it looks like the tib fracture is starting to really heal now, too. A part of the gap between the two pieces of bone has already filled in nicely and the rest SHOULD follow suit during the next several months. So, I can do sports again, obviously depending on the pain in my knee and the state of my peroneus damage, which has gradually gotten better. Only lifting the big toe seems to not be working too well at this point.So, I think I am good to ski (maybe not too many cliffs and kickers) this winter.

Some things I have noticed during this journey (so far):

- You can actually break a leg in awesome snow conditions. tearing an acl, yeah I expected that, but a tib/fib fracture? I was kind of surprised.

- Docs and surgeons tend to tell a lot of BS, from time to time. Listen to your body (if you have had a few injuries you get a little bit of a feel of whats going on), get some info ANYWHERE (on the net, several doctors) and keep asking the docs questions. They might get pissed from time to time but that will often show you that they are not that sure of your injury status either.

- Double check if possible. The docs at the one hospital I had a check up at were a little fast to perform surgery. I guess they would have wanted to take the nail out and put a new one in there when the healing process wasnt really going that well.

- a lot of nurses really are hot

Thats it for me, at least I hope I wont have to add anything major to this thread anymore. I hope, you read through this whole thing only out of curiosity and not because you broke your leg and thus are forced to get info on this topic. A site for some really good info:
FAQ-section at www.mybrokenleg.com

[gergberg]

Short update:

Just went skiing for 2 days, 9.5 months after the accident. I need a new ski boot, but otherwise everything seems to come along nicely.

3 weeks ago, I ran for 45 min and didnt have to stop due to pain for the first time, so I decided it was time for some easy skiing. I felt like I had never skied before for the first few runs but on the second day I finally got comfortable again, on groomers and some easy rails and boxes.