i live sweat but i dream light-years
I got an email recently from another trimalleolar patient who’s endured three surgeries so far*. Understandably, he’s quite depressed right now, and wondering if and how he’ll ever get his life back. It made my day when he said that this blog gave him hope that he could fully recover and be out and about again.
This sort of injury does eat up your life for awhile. It’s common to spend about four months in casts and boots before starting physical therapy. And even after regaining mobility, there’s still a lot of pain to deal with. I broke mine in February of 2004, and the following December I was still in so much pain that I consulted with my surgeon about taking the hardware out. We did an MRI to see what was up in there, and when it turned out that things were still fine we decided to leave it alone for the time being. Two plates and however many screws (10?) are still there now, more than two years in, and the pain lessens every month. It’s still something I have to actively manage, though. Last week, I taught for 3 hours on Monday and Wednesday, standing on my feet the entire time, and then walked 3 miles on Tuesday. I was physically capable of it, but it was really too much and I ended up with a swollen, achy ankle. So I iced it a couple of times and didn't go on long hikes much in the latter part of the week. But I still did my normal things - grocery store, two breakfasts with friends, a photography lecture, and a trip to the Farmer's Market with C (which involves lots of walking on cobblestones). Sometimes I was a little hobble-y, but not generally. I had also planned to go to the Stone Arch Festival, but didn’t make it for reasons that were completely unrelated to ankles. That would have meant some swelling, but nothing unmanageable — especially if I had gone on Saturday and rested on Sunday before teaching on Monday night.
That’s the key, I think: to keep getting out and doing as much as you can. It has been for me, anyway. Some days ‘as much as you can’ isn’t very much at all. You find out where the line is, and make sure you don’t cross it and re-injure yourself. But minor swelling and pain can be treated with ice and ibuprofen, and it’s a reasonable price to pay for regaining your life.
(More below the fold.)
There are several factors that helped me find and maintain this particular attitude:
- I had a partner who had previously sustained and recovered from the same injury. He refused to let me feel sorry for myself past a certain point. An illustration: about 16 months after my surgery, we were at the Turtle Rocks in Petit Jean State Park. I was balking at walking down them because I knew too much uneven ground would make my ankle hurt. Mister Husband said, “ Who knows when we’ll be back here again? Do you want to miss this? Come on.” We hiked down them, down a trail to a waterfall, and back. I did in fact live, and so did my ankle, and I got to have the experience. A little ibuprofen and elevation that night fixed everything up.
- I had an all-consuming project that I was working on, since I was in my second semester of PhD coursework when it happened. This gave me something else to worry about. I was very lucky, since I was teaching online and taking a course online that semester. My other f2f professor was extraordinarily understanding and let me keep up with discussions and readings from a distance. I would send my work in via email or Mister Husband, and Wonderful F2f Prof would read it aloud in class. He also read a paper for me at a conference that semester. We joked that he was the only licensed Krista-impersonator in the world. The following Fall, I went back to normal full-time teaching and coursework.
- This helped me move on from researching my condition after awhile, because I had other stuff to do. And at that point, most of what I found to read on the net was highly clinical, anyway. That’s part of why I made a point of creating this category and keeping it updated. Which brings up a related point — finding ways to help others helps you. Building that category for other patients to find and keeping it updated helped me a lot.
- Being a firm believer in writing as a means of psychological healing, I wrote through a lot of my issues with my injury. A lot of it is here, but some of it was so ugly that it went into a handwritten journal.
- I found a good massage therapist and got to work on gently breaking up the scar tissue. It’ll take many months, but it’s worth it.
Changing your focus to other, better aspects of your life is so important. I wasn’t always successful with that. As I’ve briefly mentioned before, I sued my apartment complex over the condition of the lot I fell in. Reaching a settlement took almost exactly two years. When we had signed the paperwork and I had the check in my pocket, I suddenly thought, “Good. I can finish getting better now.” Until that moment, I had no idea that I felt that way. The suit was a necessary thing for me, but it also made me hold onto this injury in a way that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. In other words, it kept me from being able to fully move on. I don’t regret the litigation, but I did pay a price beyond my lawyer's fees.
So that’s what I’ve got to say about this now, 28 months from my surgery date. I’m looking forward to seeing how things progress over the next year and a half or so, since the 3-4 year period seems to be where a lot of people see another significant drop in pain levels. I’ll continue to update this category from time to time for the folks who surf in here.
*Whether or not this should ever be necessary is not something I’m qualified to comment on. But from all the stories I’ve read and had recounted to me, it seems like this should only happen in that rarest of circumstances. If you’ve surfed in here because you just broke your ankle and are looking for answers, this is not necessarily what’s in store for you. If your surgeon tells you that it is, find someone else for a second opinion immediately.