Three years, five months, and nineteen days out . . . but who's counting?

[truepenny]

This is most likely the last post I will make specifically about my ankle, unless something changes dramatically for better or worse, although I'll probably still bitch about it from time to time.

I'm making this post for closure on the series of posts I made about breaking my ankle and recovering therefrom, and because everything is a learning experience and everything is potentially story material, so that anyone thinking about breaking a character's ankle will have some idea of (at least some of) the possible repercussions and outcomes.


My ankle is basically as healed as it's going to get. I have full range of motion, and 99 days out of 100 I don't limp. I still have nine titanium screws and a titanium plate in there because the surgery to take them out seems like a much worse problem than the occasional discomfort they cause me. The worst of the discomfort is that cold weather causes inflamation around the plate, and I've discovered this year that wearing a cut-up old sock under my regular sock, and wearing that cut-up old sock to bed, reduces that problem almost to zero. It also keeps the joint warmer and therefore more flexible. It's still uncomfortable to lie on my right side for too long (although the socklet helps with that, too), because while my ankle will flex to the inside, it doesn't like to hold the position. And it still hurts like mad howling fury if I bang either condyle on, say, the leg of my office chair. There's an adhesion on the outer condyle, but that doesn't actually bother me aside from the fact that it's weird to touch.

I have a Morton's neuroma, most likely caused by the stresses of walking with a recalcitrant Achilles tendon, and I was working on a stress fracture in my second metatarsal (I forget the word for the problem, but it's the grade below "stress fracture," i.e., the place where a stress fracture is going to happen if nobody intervenes), but those problems have pretty much been solved by PT (for the neuroma) and a custom orthotic. I only very rarely catch the neuroma wrong, and almost always while I'm wandering around barefoot as I prefer to do, and I haven't (knock on wood) had any trouble with the metatarsal in more than a year. The PT & the orthotic & the occasional shooting pain seemed like a better answer to the neuroma than the surgery that would (a) leave me with some part of my foot insensate and (b) possibly not solve the problem. Plus (c) being more surgery, which has become something I am extremely keen to avoid.

The worst problem I have, and the one least amenable to any kind of solution, is that one of the interior ligaments has calcified. This throws off the very delicate geometry of the ankle joint, so that my talus no longer fits quite correctly in the socket created by the tibia and fibula. This makes the joint stiff and awkward (and I can make it pop on command, which is NOT comforting), and unfortunately, there's nothing to be done about it. The orthotic takes care of the chain reaction where the problem in the ankle causes problems in the foot, but the podiatrist I talked to said that even if I could find a surgeon willing to go inside the joint and scrape off the calcification, it was overwhelmingly likely that it would just come back. And she didn't think I'd find a surgeon willing to do it anyway. (She was also phenomenally impressed with the screws--"Come here!" she said to a colleague. "You have to see this! It's the size of a pencil!"). The calcification isn't the result of anything anybody did wrong; it's just one of those things that the body can do when it's trying to heal.

So the joint is stiff and painful, especially first thing in the morning, and I still occasionally have the tendons seize up, and that's the forecast for the foreseeable future. It's a good thing, I think, that my passion has turned out to be dressage rather than rock climbing, because I don't think I can manage the combination of force and flexibility that rock climbing requires, but dressage doesn't bother my ankle at all (except that some days I can't flex it far enough to get my foot in the stirrup without some help).

I have also become excruciatingly paranoid about untrustworthy footing.


Overall--and I want to be clear about this--I am extremely lucky. I do have full range of motion, and the lingering problems don't prevent me from doing any of the things I love. The RLS is far, far worse, both in terms of day to day nuisance value and because it makes travel so very, very unpleasant. But my ankle is never going to be as good as it was before I broke it, and while I'm at peace with that (unlike with the sleep apnea, which still makes me want to punch things), it is a fact that requires some workarounds and hacks in order to be manageable. (Really, the cut-up old socks are damn near miraculous.)

And that's the new status quo.

Comments

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I so very much love the tag "this is for posterity so be honest."

And yup, workarounds and hacks. :nods companionably:

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I am always amazed how often the answer is something small and silly like a cut-up old sock.

A useful & thought-provoking compendium, with support for Dr. Jones' famous observation that it's not the years, it's the mileage. A list for my mother's femur fracture would have some overlaps.

My Morton's neuroma is not your Morton's neuroma, but I have discovered that my left foot (the one with the neuroma) is a smidgen wider then the right, and that fitting the shoe to my left foot rather than the right helps a lot. It confuses shoe salespeople, as the standard is to try on the right shoe first, for some reason, but they aren't the ones wearing the shoe & walking with a neuroma so I don't worry too much about that. I also find that a thicker sole is better than a thin one (better cushioning, no doubt). Also, tiny steroid injections are possible in case of desperate inflammation. May I live another 25 years or more without surgery on the damn thing, and may you do the same!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am so glad of that sock. I wish there were more sock-equivalents.

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Getting by on spare socks and spoons. :)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

None of my problems have ever been as severe as yours, but my god, do I have sympathy for ankle troubles. My left ankle has popped on command for years -- I'd never thought to consider it much of an issue, but now I'm wondering -- and the geometry of that joint has basically been my nemesis my whole life. (Apparently one set of the ligaments that control the talus are very short in me, with the result that I can plantarflex like a professional ballerina, but bend all of about ten or fifteen degrees in the other direction.) And jeebus do I know what you mean about untrustworthy footing.

I'm glad things like cut-up old socks are able to mitigate some of the issues so easily. I knew when you first posted about the fracture that it was a bad one; this post, more than anything else, really hammered home to me just how bad it was.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Oh lord, yeah. *wonders about thrift stores as a source of socks* I got thrift store contacts. We can set you up...

When I was diagnosed with metatarsalgia they gave me a rigid brace gizmo to wear at night. Would something like that help you, for sleeping on the right side, just to keep the ankle from flexing too much?

And untrustworthy footing is also my nemesis, because I lack anything that might be considered either grace or coordination. I trip on flat floors. I need a Walking Foot Dog or something.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Morton's neuroma appears to be the crappy foot problem of the decade, as my mom has one, and I appear to be in the early stages of my very own.

Le Sigh.

[eiriene.livejournal.com]

Please don't feel bad about the unstable footing paranoia--I have it too.

I've sprained both my ankles multiple times, badly, so I'm incredibly paranoid about doing it again. It's a natural response. =)

[sillylilly-bird.livejournal.com]

Just having a layer of fabric over the affected joint helps SO MUCH. It's why I have made myself so many wrist warmers.

Also, I've been exceedingly paranoid about footing the last month and a half or so as I fell down in my own house [entry way is a step down from the main level] and sprained my left foot/ankle, including an avulsion fracture of the 5th proximal metatarsal, and smacked the bejeezus out of my right [bad] knee.

I'm actually pretty coordinated - I can dance salsa etc, but it's that walking thing that's hard.