You know those two lateral screws that go all the way through both my tibia and fibula? I knew from the get-go that they could probably, would probably break. That’s part of the deal. What I didn’t understand until a couple of days ago is that I won’t have full range of motion until they break. Therefore, breakage is considered good. Desirable. Wanted.

One might think that the sensible thing to do would be to take the damn things out before they snap. That’s what Mister Boyfriend’s surgeon did, and there was only one screw to break in his case. (When it came out after three months, it was already bent.) But no, my surgeon says that he doesn’t automatically remove them because there’s no good way to know exactly when to take the suckers out. This irks me to no end, as you might imagine. But he teaches orthopedic surgery at UMN, is on the state orthopedic board, and puts the local female pro basketball players back together when they snap their ankles. It’s possible he might know more about ankle repair than me.

So the plan is that I keep relearning to walk, and then I walk until these titanium screws snap. Then we see if I can tolerate them being in there or not. Perhaps I won’t even know — after all, I didn’t realize for a couple of months that there was a three-inch incision that went to the bone and was closed with seven staples in the back of my ankle, so I suppose it’s possible that I might not notice some broken screws. If it turns out that they do bother me, then there will be more surgery to remove them. Re-cut, unscrew, re-staple. But it seems to be a fairly minor outpatient procedure, so that’s something.

I’ll walk. We’ll see.